Refuge In Audacity (or Die Trying)
by Heir of the void
Summary: July, 1998. The BETA invasion of Japan has just begun with millions already dead in the opening hours of the battle. On the fields of forsaken Kyushu, an impossibility appears, and a young man finds himself inexplicably placed at the head of the treacherous path of glory and tragedy, a player in a tale of ubiquitous horror and ordinary heroism.
1. Chapter 1

This story does not start with my death. For some reason, I feel like that's how it should go, but if I _did_ die when the ragged hole in reality crackling with colorless lighting and vaguely painful to look at appeared in front of me, then its officially bullshit and doesn't count.

Don't get me wrong; if I'd done something brilliant, like running into the hole in everything or poking it with a stick, it would have been fair game. That said, I did the smart thing and started backing away slowly. As soon as I had a clear path of retreat, I turned to run.

I never got that far. Just as I was turning around and wondering what kind of radiation dose I was soaking up, a massive faintly-clawed hand somehow made of the same absence as the hole appeared reaching out from the hole, grabbed me just tightly enough to be unpleasant, and dragged me out of reality.

The last thing I remembered was turning off the part of my brain responsible for logical thought. It seemed obsolete. Then I hit the event horizon.

I'm fairly sure I disintegrated.

 **Luv and Drugs-01**

Waking up was unusual, for several reasons. For one thing, I rarely needed my alarm clock to wake up on time, but that hardly proves anything. However, the fact that I only had one alarm clock, which should not have been capable of producing the cacophony I was now hearing, was somewhat more concerning.

It took me a second to realize that I was sitting in some sort of chair. This immediately became the most concerning factor in the situation.

I opened my eyes. I was sitting in some kind of control station, almost like the cockpit of an aircraft, sans windows. If it weren't for the relatively simply nature of the control panel laid out in front of me-

System exiting standby mode. Please wait.

Huh. Writing on my vision. Tilting my head confirmed that the words stayed in the same spot on my field of view. That was definitely odd.

At that moment, the standby message disappeared as the cockpit around me came to life. It seemed vaguely familiar, like I'd seen the setup somewhere before.

"Someone help! They're everywhere, we can't hold here much longer-"

"This is Appaloosa Flight 3, we are under heavy attack and ammunition is in the red. Requesting relief or resupply."

"I'm the only one left! How-"

One of the monitors, which appeared to show a sort of simplified map, abruptly lit up red, glowing like a bed of coals. _Distress signals_.

What was going on?

Several sensations followed in quick succession. A sudden chill, followed by something like my hand falling asleep, but on my entire body and considerably angrier, followed by what can only be described as the feeling of licking a substation transformer. I suffered this in stoic silence, and there isn't anyone who can contradict my account.

Standard Fortified Suit connection established - Nominal

Fortified Suit. I _knew_ I'd heard that one before.

Secondary Array Mind Impulse Unit connection established - Nominal

System ver 1.03 - A-12 Avenger

Fully online.

"Oh God." I muttered, as the system start notification vanished. This couldn't be-

The last thing I remembered was being dragged into a ragged hole in reality. _Of course_ it could be.

July 7 1998. BETA forces have crossed the Tsushima Strait and made landfall in Kyushu, Japan. Estimated strength is upward of one million combat units, Destroyer/Grappler heavy. Die or fly.

Good Hunting.

With that, my main display activated, revealing the hellscape outside.

It was clearly night, though the burning city in the near distance provided plenty of illumination even without my low-light/night vision systems. Flashes of light appeared in quick sequence from somewhere over the horizon, each one briefly highlighting the vast, rolling clouds of smoke presently filling the sky. Corpses littered the ground on one side of the city; opening a zoomed view for a closer look only confirmed what I suppose I already knew.

BETA. Grappler-class, like soft-bodied crustaceans with a pair of massive bludgeons in the place of pincer claws and a strange sensory organ like a deformed human head mounted on a sort of rigid tail rising from the back of the body.

Destroyer-class, six legs supporting a large body, generally unremarkable except for the massive arrowhead-shaped semi-conical carapace neatly covering the front half of the creature and providing near-complete protection against frontal attacks short of the full fury of a naval rifle.

I grinned slightly. _We'd see about that._

My face froze. _Where did_ that _come from?_

Before I could consider the matter any further, my motion detector alert went off. A view window open over my main display, showing a column of nearly a hundred of the larger strains of BETA.

Notably, these were very much alive.

Tentatively, I reached forward and grasped the twin control joysticks. They felt... Right. Not nearly as alien as the controls of a cutting-edge piece of military hardware from another dimension should have been.

One of the Grapplers stopped, its 'head' twitching in my direction.

 _I can fight, and if I don't, I die._ My grip tightened on the control sticks. _Worrying about the little things can come later._

My machine currently rested in a kneeling position; I wanted to fight standing up. So I stood, checking my weapons status.

R 1/2/3/4 - 100% - Ready

L 1/2/3/4 - 100% - Ready

Quench 1 - 100% - Ready

Quench 2 - 100% - Ready

Quench 3 - 100% - Ready

Quench 4 - 100% - Ready

Weapons were good to go. I probably wouldn't need the shoulder cannons for this, and the range was short enough that using indirect-fire weapons would be a waste.

Shifting the footing of my Avenger, I leveled its forearms, and the shield-like ordinance pods mounted on the outside of both, at the enemy. Angles were good, power was normal, fire control was ready.

I took a deep breath, nodded, and pressed the firing studs.

Electromagnetic power uncoiled in each of the eight railguns, energy born from the Avenger's atomic reactor and trapped in layered supercarbon capacitor stacks flowing down the various conductive rails and armatures of each gun. It was an intricate, yet precisely and elegantly choreographed symphony, one which culminated in the expulsion of a 27.5mm shell at more than four times the local speed of sound.

Three of those shells missed their targets entirely. One winged a smaller Tank-class. Its fuse, designed for internal detonation on a Grappler or Destroyer, did not trigger in time, and the round overpenetrated and detonated an instant after exiting the monster.

A second Tank was less lucky, the fifth shell impacting center of body mass and detonating internally, to lethal effect, and the three remaining rounds struck the unarmored back of a Destroyer-class, with similar results.

The next volley arrived less than half a second later.

I focused on the Destroyers, firing in short bursts as I swept the column. They really did go down easily once you had a clear shot at someplace not covered by carapace, and none of them managed to turn in time to make that a problem. The Tank and Grappler-class died after that, far enough away that they never posed a real threat without the Destroyer-class to soak up fire.

Which left me with one key question. _What now?_

I couldn't survive on my own forever, or even for all that long. I hadn't expended much ammunition, but that had been a very small group of BETA. While the Avenger's atomic power system removed fuel as an immediate concern, but I had no idea what kind of mechanical operational endurance it had.

You couldn't survive something like this on your own, and I _did_ have a giant robot. Saving someone from alien monsters couldn't be the _worst_ way to make a first impression, and I was a bit short on better ideas.

Rail 1 - 100% - Ready

Rail 2 - 100% - Ready

I re-opened the signal register and began sorting through the distress signals I'd received, which appeared to be the only communications I was getting. Weird, but I'd already decided that thinking about weird things was going to be postponed until no Creatures were attempting to eat my face.

For my idea to work, I needed to find a _properly_ imperiled unit. They needed to be in existential danger, but not so much that I'd get myself killed trying to help them. A larger unit was preferable, so as to maximize impact, but condition one would be trickier with a larger formation. If I could...

-There. U.S. Army 32nd Attack Squadron, low on ammo and heavily invested, but only minor actual losses. And... Imperial Guard Flights Zaku 1 and Zaku 3 operating in close proximity. Their losses were unsurprisingly worse, but it was hard to make out many details from the distress call. I wasn't _entirely_ sure if I wanted to touch anything involving the Japanese Guard; political landmines were the last thing I needed, and my Klingon was rusty.

In any case, it was best to get the lay of the land before making a decision. I shifted the Avenger to a kneeling stance and fired.

The idea here was taking the concept of 'reconnaissance by fire' far too literally. Rather than mounting sensor gear on a drone to carry it over the battlefield, and thus incurring the loss of a not-inexpensive drone when it was lasered, I was simply firing a shell consisting of disposable sensors and a broadband tightbeam transmitter from each of the Avenger's back-mounted indirect-fire railguns.

How, exactly, it came to exist here was... Really no less puzzling than everything else that I wasn't thinking about.

The recon shells didn't give a very long look, but it was more than enough. The 32nd Attack Squadron and Zaku flights were...

They met my conditions, probably better than I could reasonably expect to find again before Kyushu was overrun, which would be sometime tomorrow if I remembered events correctly. And the group wasn't too far away, no more than a few minutes if I stayed low enough to avoid being lasered.

I felt the weight of my Avenger shift as its Jump Units powered up, then eased the craft forward.

"Alea iacta est." I muttered, trying to find a balance between altitude and speed. I managed that fairly, but no longer unexpectedly, quickly.

The BETA would've destroyed that house eventually.

After a few minutes in flight, I heard a crackle of static over my comms array, like someone trying to broadcast through a heavy metal cloud. The signal steadily improved as I drew closer, until my communications system managed to get a solid lock on the source and frequency. Directional antenna aligned, and suddenly I had a clear signal.

"-Say again, this is Wyrm 1 to incoming unit. State your mission and identification."

I needed to play this right. Probably best not to stand out, for now. Present myself like a pilot separated from my unit, and hope they don't draw the much less plausible conclusion. I could figure out the rest later.

"This is Seraph 1, moving to assist. Is that-"

"We have a brigade-scale herd forming up for a supported Destroyer wave." Wyrm 1 said, as she was more frustrated than scared by that fact. "If you're only one unit-"

I fired another set of recon shells, these at a lower speed and set to broadcast much more visibly in the direction of the enemy. Both made it to upwards of five hundred meters before being burned down, meaning there probably weren't any Lasers in the _immediate_ vicinity. But before they burned, the shells had allowed me to confirm the situation. I was approaching from Wyrm Squadron from behind the ridge they had set their backs to, so the Destroyer's frontal carapace would in position to face my guns.

"They're beginning the charge." Wyrm 1 said. "There's no point in dying here with us, Seraph 1. If you can still fight, do it someplace where it might matter."

"Rodger that, Wyrm 1." I said, cresting the ridge and planting my feet a few meters down the reverse slope.

Power began to flow into the supercapacitor banks connected to my shoulder cannons, coolant pumps humming in preparation for extended firing.

"That you for the advice. I believe I'll do exactly as you suggest." Targeting matrix was open. Range/elevation projection complete, detonation commands were ready.

"Good." Wyrm 1 said, actually sounding relived. "I hope we meet one day in that place where warriors take their rest."

The first Destroyer-class were crossing the four-kilometer mark.

"Killer Junior." I muttered, and pulled the trigger.

Electromagnets were energized and quenched in each of my four shoulder cannons, generating a wave of enormously powerful magnetic force that latched onto the casing of a 120mm round designed for just that purpose and accelerated it toward the enemy. Very quickly.

Each round followed a relatively flat trajectory, one calculated to bring it to a point about thirty meters above the ground and directly above the rear edge of a leading Destroyer's carapace.

Canister shot from a 120mm tank gun was not an anti-personnel weapon, at least in the sense that it was fully capable of destroying vehicles not built to withstand machine gun fire. The rounds I'd fired were intended for a similar effect, but not in a cone extending three hundred meters from the barrel.

Instead, the high-explosive filler was intended to turn the thousand-plus metal balls filling the shell into a storm of metal radiating generally away from the detonation point.

The detonation point _behind_ the line of destroyers.

My shells exploded essentially on target, the energetic propellant in each round blooming into blazing orange-white for the half-second it took to cool to invisibility.

I watched three of the living battering rams drop, tissue flayed beyond functionality by dozens or hundreds of supersonic chunks of tungsten carbide. At least as many of the creatures staggered but stayed up, their alien physiology allowing them to endure the damage.

I kept firing, discharging the quenchguns in sequence. One every two and a half seconds, so as to give the cooling systems a chance to keep up with the enormous heat generated by the weapons. And to conserve ammunition; the airburst shells were heavy, and I had fewer of them than I would have liked.

It was working. The airburst rounds weren't killing or maiming all, or even most, of the Destroyers. Events were proceeding as planned nonetheless.

A Destroyer-class line was so effective because each monster's unarmored flanks were protected by the carapaces of the beasts on either side, effectively preventing a TSF from strafing to the side and firing acute-angle shots at vulnerable rear of the Destroyer. It was effective defensively for largely the same reasons as a phalanx, and it added in the broad-front sweeping shock flavor of a heavy cavalry charge for a truly unpleasant recipe.

That said, phalanxes and heavy cavalry both had the same essential lynchpin.

Cohesion.

It was high time someone took that away from these freaks.

The same incredible momentum that made the Destroyer-class BETA so difficult to face was now working against them. Each one that fell presented a considerable obstacle to those behind it, and apparently Destroyers don't corner well.

But all the same, I wasn't _stopping_ their advance. Their morale wouldn't break, so it was a simple question of arithmetic, and I wasn't killing them nearly fast enough.

Thankfully, I wasn't alone.

As the leading elements of the BETA swarm crossed the three-kilometer mark, the 32nd Attack Squadron went to work.

The twin light flares of Jump Unit drives provided enough illumination for me to make out the shapes of each the Warthogs in the two elements redlining their drives as they boosted in opposite directions perpendicular to the BETA front. Four TSAs in each group, two GAU-8s each.

They reached their positions quickly and went to work. I ceased fire as they opened up; there was no need to waste ammo.

The loss of coherency of the Destroyer-class leading the charge had ruined their parallel protection, leaving individuals exposed to shots from the sides. The acute-angle shots were by no means easy, but the Law of Averages is a powerful thing, and the situation was certainly not one that called for restraint.

The streamers of orange fire extending from the twin rotary cannons on each Warthog reached out toward the swarm, picking out the aliens that had too far forward of their fellows. The bursts of 36mm shells conjured momentarily brilliant fountains of sparks where they struck carapace; the rounds on target we much less visible.

It was like watching an avalanche.

The Warthogs killed the BETA far faster than I had, presenting far more obstacles to those in what were now the secondary ranks. The effect was cascading too quickly for the BETA in the rear to control. The advance of the leading edge of the swarm slowed, then stalled entirely.

And a few moments later, something amazing happened. A Destroyer fell, and there was not another to replace it. Its spot was filled by a Grappler-class, which was ended by one of the three Warthogs holding the center with almost contemptuous ease. It happened again, a few seconds later.

And with that, this sliver of the Invasion of Japan turned from combat to butchery. The Grappler and Tank-class BETA, tightly packed behind the Destroyer wall, had no escape.

Which left me with a nagging feeling that I was missing something.

The Zaku Flights. Eleven A-10s accounted for the 32nd Attack Squadron, but I had yet to see a single TSF. Maybe that was for the best; I'd already gotten lucky here, and...

I sighed. Their distress beacon was still lit.

"I'm going to have to do the right thing here, aren't I?" I muttered, loading both my heavy railguns with recon shells and firing.

This time, both rounds made it more than a kilometer up before the lasers knocked them out. They easily achieved line-of-sight to the rough location of the Zaku flights, but they were considerably deeper in the smoke plume of the burning city, amplifying the problem caused by the ubiquitous heavy metal clouds. I started the analysis algorithms to try and make sense of what was actually in the area.

Then I thought about lasers.

The beams were at a higher angle this time, though. If they'd gotten higher because the intercepting Laser-class were further away, the beam angle would have been the same as a lower interception by proportionally closer aliens.

That meant the Laser-class had engaged later, for one reason or another. Maybe they were dueling a warship or artillery battery, or a TSF squadron had run out of luck.

It wasn't difficult to determine the location of the laser class. The beams were invisible, obviously, but not difficult to track. Some photons were still scattered by the air, and when they struck a target, there would be a significant flash of light reflected off the surface and a plume of vaporized material back in the direction of the beam. Naturally, one you identified some section of the beam, there was only one spot on the ground it could have come from.

The computer had located the laser battery before I'd even finished my firing preparations. I set one knee on the ground; I wanted to keep the trajectory and the flight time both low, which meant high-velocity low-angle shots. Not particularly easy to do standing up.

I leaned forward, the autoloaders on the railguns whirring as they placed new shells at the base of the primary conductor rails. Not recon shells this time.

Using the neural controls was disconcerting, in a way, but amazing at the same time. I could never have moved my own body with the sort of milliradian precision this task called for, and the feedback from the computer assisted motions felt not quite right.

But on the other hand, I was moving a giant robot with my mind. The cloud was pretty big, but I had to try and scrape at least a few chocolate bars worth of silver off of it.

The alternative didn't bear thinking about.

With the guns in position and capacitors charged, I fired.

The heavy railguns exceeded the muzzle velocity of even my shoulder-mount cannons. They were intended for indirect fire, and the distance they would throw a shell was a function of its velocity. That was why long-range artillery pieces often still used a shell and multiple powder charges rather than a single cased round; using fewer charges, and thus firing a shell more slowly, actually made it easier to accurately hit a target closer than the maximum range of the gun.

With my railguns, that was considerably easier; I could dial the velocity up and down at will, like an arquebusier judging the amount of powder his weapon needed for a given shot.

I felt the first volley twice; once via feedback from my suit, and once as I felt myself move, anchored in the cockpit. It only took a moment to correct the angle for the second set, and a few more to accumulate power and cool the weapon.

My best sensor arrays were out of position to watch the shells it flight, but I still detected the plumes of the first two being vaporized just before and just after apogee. There was definitely something else happening; the lasers firing at some other set of target. There were too many beam scatter trails for the lasers to be engaging just me.

I very carefully didn't think about how I knew that. It was getting easier, probably on account of the alarming about of practice I'd had.

The third salvo reached the terminal point; the thermal seekers should have locked on to the massive signature of the waste heat produced by laser fire, then corrected the flight path of the shells to ensure the ICM submunitions were spread over the proper area. I didn't pick up anything indicating that the fourth salvo had been intercepted.

Nearby, the guns of the 32nd Attack Squadron finally went silent. Glancing back at my thermal/ammunition charts, I realized just how _short_ the engagement had been; the heat sinks for my quenchguns had yet to fully cool.

It was a strange, the almost eternal moment after the shooting stopped. I had faced life-or-death combat, but I'd survived. I'd won. The odds were long, but the fight was not unwinnable.

"Seraph 1, this is Wyrm 1."

A communication window opened on my display peripherals, showing me the face of Wyrm 1, a woman identified as Captain Ingrid Jensen. She looked younger than I would have expected for a multi-unit commander, but wartime exigence usually had that effect in extended conflicts. She had blonde hair in a shortish military cut, pale skin that stood in sharp contrast to the jet-black facial components of her fortified suit. Her eyes were faintly odd; the glacial blue of her irises made the red dots cast on her pupils by the retinal projection system much more noticeable.

I glanced down at myself; presumably she could see me. My present attire was essentially a fortified suit without the attempt at a Charisma bonus. I'm sure that was motivated by the shocking discovery that spalling kills, not any sort of concern about radiation leaking into the cockpit. It probably wouldn't cause any further suspicion.

"Rodger Wyrm 1, this is Seraph 1."

"Excellent work, Seraph." Captain Jensen said. "It's nice to finally see one of those experimental weapons in action. You aren't about to go into forced shutdown or something, are you?"

"No." I said. "We are still green in all respects."

"That's good to hear. We've got fuel, but you heard my call." She shook her head. "We're not quite at snake eyes on ammo yet, but that won't last if we have to perform again."

A notification appeared next to the comms window. Apparently my computer had located Zaku Flight and gotten a general idea of the surrounding area. Seven Type-82s still active, two wrecks, and more than a few Grapplers and Tanks.

"There's another unit nearby." I said, sending her the data packet. "It-"

Ingrid's eyes widened. "How old is this?"

"A hundred and thirty seconds. Give or take."

"And you want to-"

"Save seven high-performance mobile weapons, yes." I said. "They were firing infrequently while my probe was up and appear to have swords drawn. Is this really a situation where we can afford to lose anything to something as easily fixed as empty magazines? We give them a chance to reload, and then they can die _way_ more productively."

She grimaced. "That's... One of the colder justifications for an act of charity I've ever heard. But you're probably right, and a few hundred more BETA won't make a difference."

The window went to standby. A few seconds later, the Warthogs began shifting formation, and Ingrid re-appeared on my display.

"We're ready, for whatever it's worth." She said, something faintly predatory visible in her expression. "The Blizzard Wyrms, at your service. Is there any specific way you want to play this?"

It had occurred to be while I was bombarding the lasers that getting reloads might not be particularly easy. All of my electromagnetic weapons fired fairly simple projectiles, but they weren't the sort of thing that just grew on TOE charts. I needed to conserve ammunition somehow.

My Avenger had one weapon left that I hadn't deployed yet.

"Get your squad into firing positions around the target basin." I said, suppressing the sudden bout of nausea. "I'll move down to make contact and engage the enemy in-"

I sighed "-close combat."

[x]

Brigadier General Herschel Maxwell looked at his theater map. It wasn't so much that he needed to pull a rabbit out of a hat; _that_ could be done. This situation, though, called for something much harder.

The massive BETA swarm had made landfall under the cover of the typhon, which had impeded satellite observation and made it difficult for smaller warships to deploy against them. The submariners had done what they could, but with upwards of a million BETA moving in a single swarm, it probably would have been impossible to completely prevent the enemy from making landfall even under normal conditions.

Already, mere hours after the invasion had begun, at least two million people were already dead or 'effective casualties'. The military losses had been bad, but were not catastrophic. _Yet_.

Naturally, it was never just one problem. The U.S. Forces were present, well-supplied and outfitted with modern equipment, but they were hardly a ready garrison, and it showed. The idea of fixed fortifications may have fallen out of favor, but there was still plenty that could be done to prepare a defense; pre-placed ammunition caches, communication repeaters and fiber-optic landlines, ready fire plans with pieces pre-sighted for likely trouble spots and abundant ready ammunition.

It was sad, really. None of the measures he'd advocated would have been all that expensive, not compared to the cost of forward-deploying a corps-level formation. But 'digging in' would have sent signals and carried implications that certain armchair generals and _elected officials_ would have found unacceptable.

On the Japanese side, the problem was more one of equipment. While the Imperial Army Expeditionary Force formations were well equipped with Type-94s and F-15J units operated by veteran pilots, many of the Home Army and Royal Guard units were still using Gen 1.5 machines. Heavily upgraded in most cases, but that could only go so far. On top of that, it seemed that they'd dug up Josef Stalin and declared him Shogun. It had been hours since Hershel had stopped trying to count how many orders essentially boiled down to 'not one step back'.

At least he hadn't been idle in the months since he'd been assigned this posting. Most notably, he had _acquired_ of several dozen Squad Support Guns from the Australians, along with more 105mm ammunition than the General Inspector could shake a stick at. That was already paying dividends; if he didn't make it off this island alive, he'd need to figure out how to return long enough to haunt the Armed Forces Committee into licensing the damn things.

The enemy had landed on a front across the north-western coast of the island just shy of thirty-five miles long, stretching from Fukuoka to just short of Kitakyushu. They'd then split into two Army Group-scale swarms, which advanced at roughly right angles. Army Group One advanced north-east and crossed into Honshu, while Army Group Two was focusing its advance along the north-east coast of the island.

Apparently, they were content to keep their left flank snug against the coastline. It seemed like they were trying to mask the garrison forces on the southern island, either in preparation for an annihilating blow or to stabilize Army Group One's advance into Honshu.

But regardless of their goal, the maneuvering BETA had pushed an enormous number of fleeing civilians toward his command, on the Northern border of the Nagasaki Prefecture.

He'd wondered if he'd done the right thing in protecting them. Perhaps half his casualties thus far could have been avoided if he'd explicitly ordered his men to withdraw and leave them to their fate when a situation became untenable.

And he had no idea if their sacrifice had bought those fleeing anything but a stay of execution, one purchased with the lives of soldiers who might have been used to inflict far more damage upon the enemy in the days to come.

But his Regiments were still intact. Seven squadrons of Strike Eagles, ten of Fighting Falcons, and... God, it was entirely possible that he was the only general officer left in this little corner of the world.

And if no orders came, he would hold until relived.

[x]

Pilot Karen Nishimura, Zaku 8, tried to keep her hands steady as she loaded her last 36mm magazine into her assault cannon, one of the two she'd started the battle with.

She and the other six surviving members of Zaku Squadron were formed into a rough circle, blades drawn. There were BETA, mostly Tank and Grappler-class, on three sides; there numbers wouldn't have been truly dangerous, were it not for the fact that the squad had ammo totaling slightly less than three chaingun magazines left.

First Saori had been burned down by a laser, becoming another victim of the Eight Minutes of Death. Norio had been rammed by a Destroyer just after making it through his eight minutes.

Then they'd lost the Captain. He'd died well, at least, blades flashing as he was swarmed by Grapplers and dogpiled by Tanks, and the detonation of his jump units had given her squad, and a nearby artillery battery, time to withdraw. But then it seemed like everything started going wrong; she'd lost two more of her comrades as they were cornered in this basin, the laser threat too severe to jump out high enough to clear the numerous Grapplers.

"-Contact!" Hinata shouted. "Airborne, huge thermal signature. No IFF-"

Suddenly, tracers like a jet of sparks reached down and touched a Grappler a few hundred yards away, reducing the alien to a bloody ruin, with the scene repeating itself a dozen times within a few seconds.

Then Karen picked up the 'huge thermal signature', moments before it touched down thirty meters in front of her.

At once, the scale of its heat output made sense. The Jump Units on its legs shone like orbital boosters, which would be necessary to move the sheer bulk of the machine. Most TSFs were built like fencers or Samurai swordsmen; lithe, with agility and graceful strength.

This machine was built like one of the Golems of western lore; _solid_ , with thick limbs and a stout body, shaped armor ridged with what had to be heat rejection surfaces in a way that gave it a sort of elegance shocking for something of such barbaric conception. And then there were the guns; at least six large cannon that she could see.

It bore the insignia of the United States on the rear of its strangely-shaped shoulder blocks; the usual star-in-circle surrounded by something else, like a mosaic outline of wings. Karen had heard of the American Tactical Surface Attackers, but had never seen one in person. She'd expected something more... Simplistic.

Then the probably-American did something _really_ surprising. A pylon, mounted over the spine of his machine between the pair of cannons, elevated to horizontal, almost like an _Eishi_ drawing a PB-blade. Something folded out from the pylon, extending past the side of the machine's head, the machine reached up and grabbed it with its right hand as a second, shorter, section unfolded further forward.

Then the TSA raised the weapon as bolts released, revealing a silvery-metallic blade mounted on a long, dull grey shaft.

The blade was straight-edged and slightly shorter than that of a Type-74 but with an odd angular extension over a short portion of the pole, and came to what was almost certainly a sharp piercing point.

Holding the vertically weapon in both hands, the American struck the ground with the counterweight, paused, then swung the polearm into a horizontal position, holding it next to his forearm vaguely like a cavalry lance.

It was about then that the BETA attacked in earnest.

The Melee-Attacker took three steps forward, running and using pulsed thrust to boost each step, as a gaggle of Grapplers charged over a pair of Destroyer corpses to attack.

He brought his weapon down in an overhead chop between the claws of a Grappler. The blade connected, and the Attacker raised his weapon and sidestepped, aiming for a repeat attack on the next BETA.

This one defected the blade with its armored forearm and countered, though the Attacker slid back before the claw got dangerously close, then dispatched the BETA with a pair of diagonal chops.

The Surface Attacker continued to fight as the streams of tracers fell. Karen was finally able to pick up the IFF signals of another _eleven_ units in a long arc around the basin, all apparently other Tactical Surface Attackers.

"Huh." Hinata said, after a moment. "He's actually pretty good."

"I don't think that's right." Karen watched a group of Tanks attempting to approach the Attacker from its off-side turn to meat chunks. "If you look, he's using the same few moves over and over. He's just using the reach and leverage of that naginata to compound the extra strength of his frame. He's practically cheating."

"Sis, this is a war." Kanata said. "There's no such thing as _cheating_ in a war."

Then in a lower voice. "I would like to know what's going on here, though."

[x]

I drove my glaive into the unarmored back of a lone Destroyer-class and _twisted_ , withdrawing the blade as the alien shuttered and died. The motion detectors and IR were reading clear, so it was probably _finally_ over.

That had been unpleasant.

This time, I'd gotten _much_ closer to the BETA. It made the danger of the situation seem far more real and, probably, far more significant. I could have been killed, and that was... sobering.

I looked out at the scattered corpses. If something had gone wrong, I almost certainly would _not_ have been gone before I had time to think about it. There might have been nothing I could do, but I'd have time to contemplate the fact that I was dying.

Maybe that was part of the unique horror.

"Seraph 1, are you all-clear?" Captain Jensen asked, opening a comm line.

I nodded. "Yeah. That was... certainly different. Did your-"

"We're fine." She shook her head. "What was that about, though?"

"Multi-role operability under adverse field conditions evaluation." I said. Hopefully development-procurement bureaucratese was opaque in all universes.

"Interesting. I didn't think we were developing that." Ingrid looked up for a moment. "I wonder what changed the policy on close-engagement. Maybe the shift from continental defense lines toward offshore containment and raiding."

"Or maybe High Command decided that we weren't sacrificing enough soldiers to the BETA."

Ingrid frowned. "Two problems with that. First, we already have the Orbital Divers as professional human sacrifices. Second, if we actually did get a decent screening unit, it might actually reduce casualties, and then we'd be right back where we started."

"Don't underestimate the capacity of high command to turn an asset into a liability whenever they can." I replied. "As Squad-level units are now equipped to engage enemies at close ranges, all calls for fire must be individually approved by divisional headquarters or higher so as to avoid excessive munitions expenditures."

"Heh. Speaking of casualties..." Ingrid did something, and a second communication window opened, showing a young Japanese man in a white fortified suit.

"This is Zaku 3. Kanata Nishimura, acting squadron leader." He shook his head. "You're a sight for sore eyes, Wyrm Squadron."

"I can imagine." Ingrid said. "But we burned the last of our ammo here, so we won't be much good until we resupply."

"I don't know about that." Kanata said, the head unit of his white Zuikaku turning to look at me. "That polearm work was pretty good. I've never seen gear like that before. In any case, we're in the same ammo situation. Both major supply bases outside Saga are still broadcasting, so we were trying to get there to refuel and rearm.

Before Ingrid could respond, a third window opened. "Thank you, _cousin_ , but that is enough. As the highest-ranked survivor, command falls to me by Guard protocol."

Kanata frowned. "Is this really a time for that sort of thing, Karen?" He said, though he sounded more weary than he did frustrated or angry.

"Of course. Strict hierarchy exists precisely _for_ times of crisis."

The girl, Karen, did look very similar to Kanata, though female and a few years younger. I'd have no trouble believing they were related. They both looked... typically Japanese, assuming purple-black hair was included in that category, with appropriately noble features. Neither looked like they got much sun, Kanata more than his cousin, though I assumed that had more to do with sealed cockpits and space-age body gloves than it did with video games.

Kanata lowered his head slightly. "Then I stand relived. What are your orders?"

"We will proceed to the Saga supply base at best speed. That is all." She glanced to the side. "It hardly matters what _they_ do. You should know that better than I do."

Karen's comm window closed. Kanata left his open for a moment. Ingrid nodded, and he closed the line.

"Wonder what that was about?" Ingrid asked.

"She mentioned protocol." I said, looking up at the secondary display of the sky over my head. "Maybe she felt like it would have reflected poorly on her if she let a lower-ranking relative maintain command? Or she was just being immature."

"Hardly matters, I suppose." Ingrid shrugged, then switched to general broadcast. "All units, we're falling back to resupply. Standard NOE formation, transmitting coordinates. Take off on my mark and from up on me."

The Warthogs' engines ignited as they lifted off, shifting into formation as the Imperial Guard TSFs began to move. I sort of... tagged along near the back.

And with that, eighteen soldiers of mankind and one liar set off into the darkened sky.


	2. Chapter 2

I looked through the composite-glass windows of the presently-unused command center, watching as Ingrid's Warthog was reloaded. It was impressive, to say the least.

As it turned out, the massive drum-magazines perched atop the A-10's shoulder blocks were only one of the _three_ repositories for ammunition for each of the machine's GAU-8/A rotary cannons. The mind-boggling part was that, at twelve and a half thousand rounds capacity, it was the _smallest_.

However, the external magazine's position on an exterior socket meant that it could be replaced during combat. The shoulder block and shoulder blade magazines needed to be chain-fed by dedicated equipment, as I was now observing.

I turned back to the strategic repeater. The supply base was not presently playing host to any operational commands, so only the battlespace-traffic control and coordination rooms were in use. My unregistered TSA and complete lack of unit insignias had caused considerable speculation as to my actual identity and purpose; I was either with the CIA, the MIB, or the Inquisition. Apparently, that had earned me some measure of respect; it had made getting into the command room fairly easy.

That wasn't nearly as bad, though, as the other reaction. _Hope_. I'd seen more than a few soldiers looking at me, as if my presence with an experimental weapon meant the situation wasn't as hopeless as it appeared.

Why would they make that sort of assumption, and why did I feel some need to not disappoint them? How did they expect me to be able to _do_ anything? You couldn't _fight_ a hurricane.

I looked back at the strategic repeater. The disposition of the enemy was represented by a stain of red creeping across the simplified landscape, shade representing the estimated BETA concentration. Laser batteries and TSF units were representing by static holographic miniatures, battlefield representation having come a sort of full circle.

The main swarms had made it more than halfway to the Pacific on the northern coast of Kyushu, with detached groups having ranged much further. The lead elements of the BETA Army Group One in Honshu had reached points past Hiroshima, though in the city itself still held.

I tapped a control key, adding a display layer to show the presence of displaced noncombatants, represented by blue dots scattered according to distribution. The BETA movements, along with apparent rumors that the Saga Defense Zone was holding, had pushed them toward Nagasaki.

The problem was that the BETA would push them into the sea in short order.

Presumably, they hoped to be able to escape by ship one of the ports in the area. That wasn't going to work. There simply weren't enough hulls present that could move people far enough away to be safe. The storm had prevented more from being sent from elsewhere, and now the presence of Laser-class made the southern sections of the inner channels usable only to warships. Perhaps a carrier could transport a large number of people beyond its crew if arrangements were made for its air wing to travel separately, but the gunboats and missile ships would simply be unable to transport more than a few hundred.

For a short distance, at the cost of their ability to lay down supporting fire.

That wasn't going to work. We could be looking at upwards of five million evacuees, if a large portion of those inbound made it to the transient safety of our MLR.

With numbers like that... This was an engineering problem as much as it was a strategic one.

I opened an oceanographic map. The BETA had launched attacks across the English Channel and the Strait of Korea, but even during the Second Battle of Britain, had never launched a supporting attack from Scandinavia or Denmark across the North Sea. That meant that they could certainly survive the ten atmospheres at one hundred meters down, but _probably_ not much more.

That made a certain about of sense. Humans could survive at those depths, but you could only really do that by using compressed air to raise your internal body pressure and equalize it with the environment, which coincidentally also became tricky after ten atmospheres.

The BETA survived off of energy from a Hive Reactor rather than ingested chemicals, meaning they would have no need for oxygen, supported by the fact that they could apparently survive in hard vacuum. That meant they wouldn't drown, but also that they might be able to take in outside water to equalize their internal pressure. It would work, but it would also become more difficult as pressure increased.

They would also suffer other problems involved with being underwater; drag would slow them down, as would buoyancy. They also needed to recharge from a Reactor relatively frequently. If I was remembering the Defense of Yokohama Base correctly, the combat strains only had something like five or seven days' worth of energy reserves.

All told, I needed to put a North Sea between the evacuees and the BETA. Which would mean...

Okinawa. I needed to get the refugees to Okinawa. The major fleet station there meant there was already infrastructure in place, both port facilities and structures that could be used as temporary shelter for large numbers of people. The approaches for the BETA would be long, far under water and easy to depth charge.

That left two obvious and considerably larger problems.

Ferries would help move people, but most of the ones we had access to were built for trips considerably shorter than the four-hundred-plus miles to Okinawa. That posed a twofold problem; provisions would need to be made to ensure they could go the distance, and they would have relatively little that we could eliminate to raise their passenger capacity above the rated value.

This was a task that called for _ships_. We could probably load a passenger liner with at least six to seven times its rated passenger capacity, and much of the crew were largely unconnected to the mechanical capability of the ship to sail and could be left behind if the vessel was making multiple trips. There was probably a difference between 'largely unconnected' and 'unrelated' here, but not as major as the difference between 'alive' and 'eaten alive'.

If I figured an estimated twenty-five thousand people per passenger ship, then the ships we had _might_ get a tithe civilians out. The BETA invasion had tanked the economy, and there just weren't that many people sailing overseas or cruising. We did have cargo ships, though, but just like back home, their crews were tiny and most of their hulls were basically open space dedicated to bulk or containerized storage.

 _But the container ships had frames!_ At least back in my nice, normal, alien-free world, a container ship would have a cavernous internal hold broken up by panels of hatches and scaffolding arrayed like a warship's frames. If that was true here, then were could have the military engineers, and anyone else who could be spared for or pressed into service assemble floors using the frames as scaffolding. We could use the load-bearing bottoms of the containers as material, and the massive hatches of the hold would mean we could use cargo cranes to lower them into place for welding.

But it would require that we be able to hold the ports of the Nagasaki area for _days_ if we want to get everyone out. The whole island had until sometime tomorrow or the day after, if things went as preordained. I had a few ideas in that respect, but nothing-

I was jolted back to the supply base command room by the sound of the door sliding open. I turned and saw Ingrid walking into the room.

"There you are." She muttered. "You know it could have been a pain to track you down without a _name_ , right? Is that a spy thing, or-"

"Great. Ingrid- Captain Jensen." I made a slashing motion across the strategic repeater, drawing a long line across the display. "I need you to help me figure out how to hold the line here long enough to turn a couple dozen cargo ships into frankenferries."

[x]

"You know," Ingrid said, looking over my evacuation plan and rough outline of a delaying action, "I don't know if you're crazy, and I should punch you in the face for being a danger to this entire command."

"Or?" I said, raising an eyebrow.

"Or if you're stupid, and I should punch you in the face on general principles." She said. "Or if this is brilliant, and I should kill you and act like it's my idea."

"And why is it that I'm considerably better off by being crazy or stupid here?" I asked.

"That's life." She replied. "But in all seriousness, I don't think the delaying action would work."

"I have my own doubts," I said, looking at the map and the angry red that seemed to have grown slightly in the minutes we were talking, "But what are you thinking?"

"Numbers." She said. "They have them, we don't. The mountains are a solid force multiplier, but the power disparity is too big. Maybe if we could use the warships more effectively we'd have a chance, but between the weather and the lasers, they aren't enough."

I sighed. "Plan B, then."

"Well, this should be good." Ingrid said.

"Why do you say that?"

"If it were a good plan, it would be Plan A." She shook her head. "Let's hear it."

"Warship failure is a two-part problem. The forecast says the weather is rapidly improving." I smiled mirthlessly. "And Plan B is a Minigun Laser Hunt."

[x]

"I still don't understand what it is you are doing here." The Imperial Army officer said. "This is well outside your area of command."

Herschel Maxwell stopped, looking at the man next to him. "I have managed to confirm that the Major General is dead. As it happened, Ichiki died just over half an hour ago, so by treaty and UN regulation, I have been in command of this region for some time now."

The Japanese officer said nothing.

"And I have elected to move my headquarters toward the front. Here, for the moment."

"Very well, sir." The man seemed to deflate slightly.

"This is the command center." He said, opening the door.

"-Is a Minigun Laser Hunt."

[x]

"I assume you are aware of the horrific casualty rates the _laserjagd_ units usually sustained." The General said, walking slowly into the room.

He was surprisingly young for the rank, perhaps somewhere in his thirties. He wore his dress uniform as if born to it, and his light-brown hair had an oddly natural appearance, as if it had simply grown into the close-cropped military cut, established a base of fire, and dug in.

"The East German line held for... slightly less than two years, I believe. The units dedicated to such operations suffered upwards of two hundred percent casualties during that time."

"Sir." I said, standing up sliding to attention and saluting in a sort of flowing maneuver I'm certain I never actually learned. "They possessed few TSFs, and their technology was poor."

"As you were." The general said, sort of waving his hand near his brow, then leaning towards my strategic repeater. "And you believe our TSFs will fare better? We also lack pilots with training specialized to that task."

"Actually, sir, I do not propose using TSFs." I said, fighting to keep my voice even. Confidant, like someone qualified to propose such an insane plan might be. "My plan is to use Tactical Surface Attackers for the main force of the operation."

Ingrid's eyes widened, recoiling slightly.

"I believe that the superior firepower of such units, along with their high capacity for anti-laser countermeasures and a volume of armor sufficient to survive a brief and or glancing beam exposure, makes them capable of accomplishing the mission in the local environment." I said, looking at the General. "Assuming they are provided the appropriate support."

"That's a novel hypothesis." The General looked down at the strategic map. The corners of his lips twitched upwards. "But when the devil drives... What kind of support did you have in mind?"

"Area bombardment." I said. "It needs to target the whole AO, preferably with at least a few guns walking with the mobile unit, through the fire doesn't need to be particularly intense, and at least a few tubes need to be on standby at all times. The guns shift fire between BETA clusters semi-randomly, basically aiming to have rounds in flight to the widest possible area at any given time."

"I don't believe I've ever heard someone propose breaking _ever_ y artillery rule in the book before. Not while sounding so confident, anyway. You would have every Laser-class in the area engaging your shells." He paused. "Why exactly do I not simply step out of the room and give Captain Jensen implicit permission to thrash you?"

"Because my plan would have every laser on the island burning down incoming shells." I said. "And a laser is still a blast furnace that happens to emit some light. The _Lux_ strains are better than the old chemical lasers, but they're still generating huge volumes of heat with each shot. But that works for them, because they can get rid of the heat."

"And that hangs a neon sign over their heads."

"So you would use IR observation to avoid their lines of fire for penetration and exfiltration?" The General asked.

"No, sir." I said. "We use IR scopes, portable artillery, and clear comms to send them to hell."

[x]

I looked out over the Japanese section of the Supply Base hanger. It looked a lot like the US/UN wing, if perhaps a bit more colorful. All five colors of Imperial Guard color-coded TSFs were present, though of the thirty-plus units present, there was only one blue Regent House Affiliated machine and two of the red ones. There were three yellow units, including Karen's machine. That one had taken some minor damage to its shoulder block armor, though it didn't have any effect on the mechanical performance of the unit and thus could be fixed 'later'.

That was, of course, assuming that there was a 'later'. My collection of ideas, which Brigadier General Maxwell had transmuted into a full blown Plan and given the cheery name of Operation Horus, called for the deployment of more than thirty Mobile Weapons in the Hunt. Supporting them would be a substantial number of fire support assets; self-propelled guns, Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems, the destroyers _USS Hackworth_ and _HMAS Stonefish_ , and the _USS Ticonderoga_ herself. In addition, a number of other Tactical Armor units had been slated for diversionary and supporting attacks or earmarked for limited-scope counterattacks following our Laser Suppression.

In a very real way, reviewing the forces I'd set in motion was scarier than facing down the BETA.

That had been the moment that it hit me that I might actually make things _worse_. Fighting the BETA, I could get myself killed. If Operation Horus went bad, I could be responsible for causing the death of hundreds of soldiers and possibly compromising the ability of the forces now under Maxwell to withdraw from Kyushu. It was currently 2246 hours, and the first movement the operation, Nilokeras, was set to begin at midnight.

If I managed to cause the line to fail in the early morning instead of half a day or more later, the battle on Honshu, currently close-fought, could turn into rout. The BETA could overrun the Tokyo Bay Area, and obliterate Japan's core industrial belt rather than merely gutting it.

 _Focus on the positive_. If Operation Horus was at least partially successful, we might be able to buy a day or more for the forces on the main island. Sure, there was a good chance that would mean I was dead, and it probably wouldn't help the surviving people of Kyushu, but it would be better than the Alternative.

If Nilokeras worked to the best-case projections, we might save at least a few hundred thousand people from the alien horde. Depending on how much damage we could do with artillery during and after the _laserjagd_ , we could buy even more time for the soldiers fighting in the North.

Best case scenario, with the components of Operation Hours following and contingent on the hunt, we would inflict massive damage on the BETA Army Group Two. The enemy would be forced to halt the northward flow of combat strains long enough to eliminate the risk of an encirclement, stalling the offensive of Army Group One. That would buy time that the defenders on that front needed dearly, and potentially allow the forces in Shikoku to dig in enough to repulse the BETA thrust that would fall on them.

And, of course, we would be able to evacuate the survivors of Kyushu, preserving the people and the garrison forces.

I turned, looking out past the entrance to the cavernous hanger to the glittering river of light in the distance. It was a highway, thousands of people fleeing, some in vehicles, many on foot. If the BETA reached them...

 _I will protect those who cannot protect themselves_. Those words meant something to me, now.

I didn't want to be here. This was a bleak world, and staying at this supply base meant accepting that. Maybe running would end poorly in the long term, but because I was an electronic void, with absolutely nothing but myself saying I existed. It wasn't as if that would be less of a problem if I stayed here. Leaving would have been easy. There were any number of ways I could have done it; I had three worked out almost without thinking.

And yet here I was. It was crazy. I had almost nothing, not even a shadow of the skeleton of ideas that had become Operation Horus, for a strategy going forward.

"What are you doing here?"

Karen Nishimura glared at me. Like me, she had not changed out of her fortified suit, though I felt like the lack of a charisma bonus on my suit made that a much more valid option for me.

"Contemplating my place in the world." I said. "Not something I ever expected to be a practical problem."

"Are you-" She shook her head. "Why are you doing that here?"

I paused for a moment. "I mostly just wandered here, I guess. Is this a restricted area?"

"No." Karen said, terse. She shook her head. "What are you trying to do here? What is it that you're trying to prove?"

"I'm not sure what you mean. I'm trying to win the war. Does there have to be some ulterior motive?"

"It's just like this new plan. Even if you manage to surpass the lasers, you'll probably screw up this bombardment too." She looked out at her Zuikaku. "And to do that, you need real warriors to babysit you while you play around with your portable artillery-"

"Actually," I said, "You get to have the big guns for this op."

I've never seen a person actually freeze. That's not quite what happened here; Karen just stopped, then slowly turned to actually look at me.

"What?"

The thought occurred that she had probably been trained in some form of personal combat, possibly unarmed. I suddenly felt the lack of a sidearm much more acutely.

"The initial plan was to have the Strike Eagles carry the SSGs, but after we got confirmation that the Guard was on board I decided we'd have them do it instead."

Perhaps that phrasing was not my best work.

"Look. You're trained and equipped for close-quarters combat, which our Strike Eagles aren't. They're optimized for shooting. But each unit can only be doing one thing at a time."

She wasn't doing anything, yet.

"There's a good chance that we'll need to conduct long-distance bombardment while engaged in direct-fire gunplay." I continued. "But if close combat becomes necessary, then we'll be engaged sufficiently heavily that bombardment can be suspended, and the lines of fire for the low-angle shots we're using may not be open."

After a moment, Karen seemed to relax, slightly. I'd gambled that she'd be enough of a solider to at least see my reasoning, even if she didn't hate it any less.

She turned back towards the hangar bay. I enacted a tactical withdrawal.

[x]

I looked over the communication procedure flow diagram again. It seemed fairly simple, but combat had a way of hanging life from small things. My mysteriously acquired knowledge seemed to center much more on technical skill than this sort of protocol. I also knew basically nothing about TSF combat formations, but considering that General Maxwell, Ingrid, and I had essentially made up the formations we'd be using for this operation a bit more than an hour ago, I decided those could wait.

"You know, this scene really is funny, in a sense." Kanata said. "I think it's that sort of gallows humor that's gotten me through this."

I looked up. I hadn't seen him enter.

"You're more or less the right age, and right now you look like you're studying for some kind of exam." He smiled. "And yet, in less than half an hour, we all face mortal combat."

"What do you mean, 'some kind' of exam?" I asked. "This is _exactly_ an exam. Don't you know there is no teacher except the enemy?"

"I suppose that's true." He smiled, sitting down across the table from me. "Michael Kranz."

I'd been asked the question twice now, when Ingrid and then General Maxwell asked my name. That was what I'd given both times.

The Archangel of War and the master of Apollo Mission Control. It seemed appropriate, somehow, though if I'd thought about it more before being asked, I probably would have chosen something more nondescript.

"I thought so." Kanata said, then shrugged. "I don't particularly care what you name really is, but I have to ask. Does your agenda stand at cross purposes with the defense of Japan?"

I looked him in the eye. "No. I have no ill will toward your nation, and I don't know if I see Christmas without a command performance and positive results here."

Kanata leaned back, closing his eyes. "Well, it isn't as if I haven't played the cloak-and-dagger game a few times myself. And Operation Horus. You had a hand in that?"

"Yes." I said. "I assume you don't like it either?"

"It's a good plan, actually." Kanata said. "I especially like the part where the civilians don't die. Risky as hell, but we aren't at a juncture that allows anything less."

"And you don't have any complaints about the... methodology?"

"Karen?"

"Karen." I paused. "How did you know?"

"I know my cousin reasonably well." Kanata said. "I apologize for whatever she may have said."

"It's fine." I replied. "She was basically what I expected."

"Should I be insulted?"

"No." I said. "You're good. Great, actually, for a sword-swinging barbarian deathly afraid of halfway decent weaponry."

"Well, it seems I was wrong about you." Kanata turned up his face as he spoke. "I thought you were passable, at least for a..."

He looked back down at me. "Will you take 'artillery fetishist' as a compliment?"

"You say that like you wouldn't."

It took me a moment to process the fact that he was genuinely laughing.

[x]

"This is command to all units." General Maxwell said. "Operation Nilokeras commences now. I need not remind you that victory may well hinge on your actions in the hours to come. Pre-heating will be timed to begin with launch. Units, confirm status."

It was an utterly pointless ritual, sharing information that all present already knew. It served only to help the pilot get psyched up, and was thus enormously helpful."

"32nd Attack Squadron." Ingrid said, voice rich with anticipation. "Ready for launch."

"Imperial Guard Zaku Squadron." Karen said, cool and professional. "Prepared to engage."

"USMC Revenant Company." Captain Jeremiah Garrett said in what was not quite a roar. "Semper Fi. Do or Die."

"501st Troop, Royal Australian Air Force." Lieutenant Ethan Smith added. "Bugs on the barbie."

"Good hunting." Maxwell said, closing the line.

"Confirming beginning of bombardment." Wyrm 7, Owen Haring, said.

I opened a general line to the formation. I'd made two of the classic blunders; I'd shown up at a fortress in distress, acted mysterious, and come up with a stupid plan, _and_ I'd gotten involved in a land war in Asia.

My grip tightened on the control sticks. I didn't exist here; to survive, I'd have to pretend to be _someone_. Maybe I could be the man the situation seemed to demand, at least for a while.

There had been one note of good news, at least. Task Force Tango Delta had set sail from the Subic Bay anchorage, and the main body of the Fifth Fleet had launched not long after. I had been informed for planning purposes, but it was still being kept quiet; if word got out and the fleets had to turn away on approach, it could be disastrous for morale.

As cold as the orders were, they made sense. The battlefleets were like fine swords; strong and powerful, but also surprisingly fragile if used poorly. If the fighting here went poorly, those ships could be essential in stabilizing the Far East Defense Line.

"All units, begin sequential launch." Captain Garrett said. He had operational command, Ingrid was his second. I was in some sort of wired advisory role. "Stay low, assume laser warning in effect at all times. Assume formation and prepare to link up with Canary Flight. Revenant 1, launching."

"Wyrm 1, launching." Ingrid said.

No turning back now.

"Seraph 1, launching."

The catapult under my feet jolted, launching me forward. I could feel it shaking through the feedback provided by my Mind Impulse Interface; I wondered if it had been built to handle Surface Attackers. The Japanese didn't operate A-10s, after all.

The magnetohydrodynamic thermal jets in my Jump Units reached full operational levels. The catapult hit the end of its track and I continued forward, rising into the air as the rest of the units in the formation continued to launch. The Eleven A-10C units of the Blizzard Wyrms, Zaku Squadron's seven Type-82s, the ten F-15Es of Revenant Squadron, and the Australian 501st, eight F-16D TSFs.

And me. Thirty-seven tactical armor units total.

Seraph Battalion.

I looked up as the formation came together. Distant lights sparkled and flashed in the sky overhead, the lasers ahead already engaging the preparatory bombardment. Most of the interceptions were faint, created by glancing strikes, punctuated by the much brighter vaporization flares of solid hits. All told, we were throwing almost half a ton of metal at the foe every single second in a maneuver that barely qualified as a diversion.

Perhaps there were a few good things in this world.

"This is Legion Control to Seraph 0." I glanced at the comm window; Legion Control had opened a private line to me directly. "Canary Flight, at your service, sir."

"Roger that, Legion." I said, looking at the location of the stream of recon drones moving into position just overhead. "You are good to go on placement."

Downlink stream analysis complete - Target signatures confirmed.

[x]

Misaki was tired. They'd gotten the evacuation order just before three in the afternoon, and had been walking almost constantly ever since. The rain had mostly stopped, at least, though Misaki only vaguely remember what it was like to be warm, or dry.

Like most outside of the nobility, her family didn't have a car; ever since the loss of the oil fields in the Middle East and Siberia, gas was too expensive to be worthwhile. She had been able to manage, but there had been those that couldn't. More of them that she wanted to think about.

Her parents had heard that the Karatsu-Saga line was still holding and decided to go that way, despite the fact that heading south would have kept them further from the BETA. Unless the southern lines collapsed. They weren't the only ones; a jagged river of humanity stretched along the expressway and out of sight in both directions.

Suddenly, there was an odd rushing sound; like wind, but somehow distant. She felt a tugging on her arm and looked down.

"Sis, what's that!" She looked up, following her little brother's pointing finger.

[x]

"Alright people, this is it." Captain Garrett said. "Laser battery, twenty-two kilometers away. We'll engage as soon as we clear this ridge. Thirty and change of the little fuckers; they shouldn't have a line of fire, but don't count on it. Engage."

I surged my drives as I crossed the low end of the rise, gliding over it in a rough line with the rest of the forward section, all A-10s and Strike Eagles. I'd appropriated a pair of assault cannons to save on railgun ammo and had them both at the ready, but the valley was empty. That was good; if there'd been any combat strains here, they would have been within easy striking distance of the stragglers on the highway only a few miles away.

The second group came over the ridge a moment later; seven Zuikaku and three Fighting Falcons, all with Squad Support Guns. I checked by long-range scopes.

"Supporting fire confirmed. Broadcasting firing solutions on auxiliary data one." I announced, watching as everything fell into place. "Light em' up!"

The TSFs raised their not-quite-oversized guns as they lifted off the surface slightly. A timer hit zero.

The ten designated gunners opened fire at the same moment as the enemy Lasers began intercepting the 175mm shells from the distant batteries of M2001-B Crusader Self-Propelled Guns, forming the 'low-lethal' of a textbook multi-vector saturation attack.

The Jump Units of the bombardment units flared as they fired, the thrust counteracting the recoil of the guns. Moving as a single rigid body with the gun, the TSFs were able to get away with lacking a significant recoil dampener. The problem posed by lacking a solid footing solved by discarding it entirely

The 105mm SSG could fire at 30 rpm for short bursts, though they couldn't sustain that rate for a number of reason. That didn't matter here; the twenty-second fire mission was an unqualified success.

I fired a recon shell as Seraph Battalion moved down into the valley. Those lasers were a fraction of a tithe of what we needed to kill, and there was no need to take pointless risks.

"Impact verified. Target battery is quiet, distributed, and cooling." Distributed, in this context, meaning something similar to 'liquefied'. "Kill confirmed."

My map updated with the data from the shell. "Plotting next target, heat signature is a bit bigger."

"We can move to the end of the valley and purge them from hull-down." Ingrid said, then grinned.

"I see it." Jeremiah said. "Plotting route and establishing fire support. Execute."

We accelerated as we moved down the valley, able to risk a few extra meters of height with massive cover on either side."

"Fire plan is ready." I said, as we approached. "Did anyone have anything come up outside projections on the recoil last time?"

"My shoulder pressure was a bit high, but I can adjust-" Karen's eyes narrowed. "Why do you care?"

"We can't lose a gunner." I muttered. "Not to something like mechanical failure."

I shook my head. "Just don't blow your arm off. If a man and his horse are one, then a man and his rifle are indistinguishable. You are the gun."

Target point. "Open fire." I said over the general broadcast, then to myself. "There is no spoon."

Another twenty seconds of fire, another distributed target. The Crusaders _might_ have gotten the kill this time, but it wasn't like they were close enough to take the credit.

"Wait. Looks like we have company up ahead." Ethan Smith, the Australian flight leader, said. "It looks like-"

"Perfect." Ingrid said, as Ethan broadcast the data. "Wyrms, by the numbers. We've got a few hundred corpses over there who haven't got the message. Don't waste Avenger ammo unless you have a reason."

"Marines, back them up." Jeremiah said. "Make sure they can't mass to close. Falcons, cover the flanks and take deflection shots any Destroyers that get their faces pointed the right way. Gunners, standby for fire support but do not engage unless necessary. Saving bullets is the name of the game."

We took off again. As a whole, the formation had yet to completely cease motion. That was key; this was a cavalry raid, pure and simple. If we stayed still long enough to let the infantry mass on us and from square, we died.

The next area we entered was considerably wider than the previous valley, sparsely forested, with what appeared to be a small abandoned town some distance away.

Scattered here and there were a number of small Company-Scale BETA swarms, not unlike the one I had encountered just after awakening.

That had only been a couple of hours ago. God. It felt like... longer.

We started killing. The enhanced range of the AMWS-21 American standard-issue assault cannon came into its own. It was considerably less expendable than the GWS-9 or Type-87, irritating logistics officers three times faster than an ordinary Assault Cannon as the inexplicable joke went, but the integral ADS gunsight sensor and datalink, stabilized chaingun, and extended cannon barrel gave it much more consistent performance as range increased.

They had no Destroyer lines, no mass, and no concentration. I don't think we let an alien within half a mile of us as we made our way through the valley. It may have been a drop in the bucket, all things considered, but I suppose the BETA would miss sixteen hundred Tanks and Grapplers more than we would miss the six or so magazines worth of chaingun ammo it took to exterminate them.

Two more small groups of Laser-class met their ends under our guns as we moved. We were getting into rhythm now, part of the Battalion would move forward with the gunners behind them, then the formation would drift back together as gunners slowed during the barrage.

"This is Warden Actual to Seraph Leads." Warden was the callsign for General Maxwell's Headquarters, and he was calling personally, which was weird and _probably_ not good.

"We read you five by five, Warden Actual." Jeremiah responded, almost immediately.

"Good. You're doing excellent work out there. It's small, but we're detecting a marked increase in the firing rate of their lasers. I have a new task for you; Space Command spotted a large enemy detachment moving our way from the infested zones to the east. Division-scale."

He paused. "They've spread out to handle the terrain, so artillery isn't as efficient as we'd like; possibly less than we can accept, considering the overall supply status. They aren't too far from your location and they're still moving at overland speed, though. Pay them a visit and reorganize their workflow, then bug out before they can jeopardize your mission. Warden Actual out."

Ingrid shook her head, "Twenty thousand in one assault swarm." She smiled. "I think we can manage."

I marked a few lines on my map. "We should be able to move to enfilade them, though. That'll multiply the effectiveness of your Avengers. We can pick a spot with some breathing room, then call in artillery and fall back once they press an attack close enough to be concerning."

"Come on." Ingrid said. "I expect better from you. We lugged the SSGs all the way here, so we should at least try to _use_ them."

[x]

Karen Nishimura was uncomfortable.

It wasn't the fighting, exactly; that was going well, a welcome reprieve from the events yesterday. It felt like it was going too well, but perhaps the for once the American 'strategy' was working as advertised.

Essentially, Karen believed she had taken the measure of the Tactical Surface Attacker. When they'd fought the BETA encircling her squadron they'd performed adequately, though the situation had only been truly dangerous because her squad had been nearly out of ammunition. The short bursts of fire they'd used had hardly been impressive; certainly not enough to justify their enormous frame-mounted cannons and associated costs to maneuverability.

She was just now processing the fact that when the leader of the Blizzard Wyrms had said they had burned the last of their ammo in that fight, she meant that they'd _started_ that fight near empty.

They flew toward the Division-sized heard and took up a position with a slight height advantage over main body of the group. Already having destroyed the only Laser batteries that might have been able to move to target the position made the high ground purely beneficial. It was a bit closer to the enemy than she might have liked; she had no idea why the Americans had picked it.

Then forty-eight Assault Cannons each rapid-fired a full magazine of canister shot into the heard below.

Her instructors had said that canister was unreliable beyond fairly short rage; it would likely inflict meaningful injuries on a large portion of enemies within its conical effect zone to a range of up to two hundred meters, and varying degrees of harm to some targets as far as five hundred meters away.

Now, nothing inside that range survived.

Then, twenty-two Avenger rotary cannons opened up, pouring a river of fire across the BETA outside the kill zone of the canister storm. The Destroyer-class died first, but the distinction was largely academic.

What had the American piloting the more advanced Attacker said? There was no distinction between a man and his rifle. She had no idea how he'd known the original saying; today it was almost exclusively used by Imperial _Eishi_. It was surprising to hear a foreign pilot say it, shocking from _him_. Oddly, during the attacks on the lasers, it had seemed helpful. Now, without a pre-generated fire plan...

She pressed one of the auxiliary control switches. The Squad Support Gun had been modified with a dual receiver, allowing it to draw rounds from one of two barrel-shaped magazines at a time. Thus far, she had only fired the... ICM, he'd called it, against the Laser-class. Now, she instructed her weapon to draw Variable-Timed blast fragmentation shells.

The Type-82 was not designed to employ any form of arc-fire weapons. As a result, they'd needed to, humiliatingly, use firing solutions generated by one of the Surface Attackers for the twenty-plus-kilometer anti-laser barrages. But now...

Karen pressed the Squad Support gun to the shoulder of her machine and leaned into it. She opened a long-range search window, then selected a group of targets and focused it on them. She elevated the rifle, trying to remember the trajectories she'd seen earlier.

She pressed the firing switch.

The gun struck her shoulder, and she could see a moment before the burst of smoke heralded the detonation of the shell that she'd been off-target. As the blast fragments shredded a pair of Tanks, she adjusted her stance.

Something _shifted_.

Karen fired.

The 105mm shell detonated between a pair of Grapplers, tearing their flanks open as a shower of hot steel ruined the dozen Tank-class screening them.

A new target came into focus on her sighting window, just as the mechanism finished cycling a new VT shell into the chamber. Another group of dead aliens.

Shift. Kill. Shift. Kill.

It was perfect. A crystallization of everything she'd ever learned set at a right angle, suddenly _complete_. Action-reaction blade control transformed perfectly into recoil control. Footing lessons becoming something almost identical, and yet utterly different. She glided into the edge of the canister kill zone, expanding her targeting angle as she fired just slightly less quickly than the mechanism would allow. She wasn't commanding the weapon, nor was she trusting its independent agency.

It was a simple extension of her will.

A Destroyer-class, one that had escaped the Thunderbolts' initial sweep, died as it tried to turn. Karen let out some light a laugh as she watched the creature fall, reaching down and drawing a fresh VT magazine as the first detached and dropped. Several groups on the far flank of the herd were beginning to coalesce and advance. That would not be allowed.

Barrel Temperature Warning - Enforced shutdown

Karen's Type-82 set down as her weapon went silent, once more becoming simply a useful dead weight.

She blushed almost immediately. What had shebeen _doing_? Had she actually _giggled_? The five-party link between the squadleaders and _him_ was still active, but it didn't sound like anyone had noticed. They were too busy pouring fire onto the BETA.

The battle had become, and subsequently ceased to be, a real contest during her... episode. With the A-10Cs able to fire down the long axis of the enemy group, they'd been able to inflict devastating casualties. That had prevented the enemy from recovering quickly from the sudden attack, and given the Assault Cannon fire from the rest of the formation time to work. The BETA had been locally denied the mass that gave them their overwhelming power.

She wasn't going to think about what effect her flailing might have had. He first shot had only killed two Tank-class units; it couldn't have accomplished anything of note. She would have to strive to make up for the shame of failing to contribute to the battle.

[x]

"Now this," Ingrid said, opening up with her Avengers as the destroyers dropped and ground to a halt, "Is the life. Kills for days, and no one-"

"You should be careful, lass." Lieutenant Smith said. "We mustn't forget the heroic sacrifices made by Canary Flight this morning. They died as warriors; may a flight of Autovalkyries carry them to the gates of Cybervalhalla."

"Right." Ingrid said, as the gunners started their bombardment. "But this, fighting the BETA by deep strike? Why didn't they cover this sort of thing in Basic?"

"The situation and terrain here are working in our favor." I said absently, looking at an odd set of sensor readings. "But the big reason is that it's dangerous and insane."

"Empirical evidence suggests otherwise." Ingrid said dryly.

"Oh, here, it's merely a high-risk high-return. But as Bobby Lee demonstrated-" Crap. Did he exist here? The timeline didn't diverge for sure until two decades after the civil war, but there was no way to know for sure if there hadn't been minor changes before that.

"-A force in an inferior position can achieve results _if_ they take smart risks. But they have to know to pick the _right_ gambles to make. Imagine trying to do this with Phantoms."

"That would _suck_." Ingrid said. "We would've died in five minutes."

"But one here has Phantoms." Ethan said. "No half-decent country has fielded a front line unit with them for a decade."

"Correct. And in a way, Seraph Battalion is now the only unit in this theater to be using anything _but_ Phantoms."

"Okay." Ingrid said. "I'm pretty sure I saw some Shiranui units back at the base, but I _could_ have been hallucinating."

Speaking of which, I looked at Karen's machine, which had stood down after finishing the fire mission. She could hear the whole conversation over the squadleader datalink, but hadn't said anything yet.

I was a bit concerned. She'd made some strange noises during the battle with the Division-swarm; if she'd developed some form of psychosis, she might not only be unfit for flight, but also dangerously insane. That would be a shame; she was actually rather competent. I could only assume that was the reason I had yet to even consider quenchgunning her when no one was looking.

"What I mean, Ingrid, is that the Phantom or its variants were essentially the only units used during the formative years of Tactical Armor doctrine. It was the only game in town for nearly the first decade of the war, and a lot of the lessons we learned then are still being applied to strategy and tactics today." I paused. "And they say you're always preparing for the last war. The same, I think, can be true during a war."

"Oh. So we're the Nazis." Ingrid said, realization brightening. "Err, that is, we're the first ones to take armor and mechanization and use them for blitzkrieg-style mobile warfare."

"Exactly." I said. I might have said something witty to follow it up, but at that moment, one of the drones of Canary Flight vanished.

Slight exaggeration; it was explosively vaporized. My sensors registered a flash of scattered photons as it happened, along with a faint coronal scattering along a line leading to the east. The only thing that could have done that was-

HEAVY LASER UNIT THEATER WARNING ISSUED

CAUTION - HEAVY LASER PROJECTED LOCATION 14 KM

Well then.

Shit.

"Evasive action!" Kanata said, almost shouting, on the general broadcast as a second drone dematerialized. "Get to cover!"

We did the logical thing. We accelerated as hard as we could straight toward the Magnus Lux BETA. We stopped a few seconds later, of course, but you wanted to be close to cover facing the Lasers. The soldiers of Seraph Battalion crouched against the ridge, our fullerene and iron colossi looking for all the world like infantrymen under suppressing fire.

No one bothered with anti-laser smoke; these things were too powerful for it to do any good. Maybe if we could have dumped a couple tons of it right on top of them while remaining ten miles away it would have been worth something. Maybe. I was still fuzzy on the exact mechanics of the heavy metal AL cloud.

"This is Warden Actual to Seraph Leads. Repeat, Warden Actual to Seraph Leads." He paused for a moment in lieu of waiting for confirmation. "We have multiple Magnus Lux activations. We're not sure what they were doing before, but they're cutting loose now; our artillery penetration rate has plummeted."

"I register twenty-eight beam sources." Karen said, her voice hard as pressed steel. "Along with multiple Fort-class units."

"We concur. There appear to be a number of smaller lasers in position to provide supplemental area defense." Hershel said, as I pulled up the provided satellite-composite mapping data.

The Heavy Laser-class were a single massive blob source near the center, with the somewhat cooler and absolutely unmistakable Fort-class ringing them.

I frowned. That made no sense. Encircling the Heavy Lasers with the gargantuan Forts would serve to block their line of sight to massive portions of the sky, causing massive gaps in their ability to provide theater defense. Keeping the Forts further away would reduce the effect, and positioning them in another's 'shadow' would eliminate its effect, while keeping the behemoths close enough to defend the Heavy Lasers. Using the encirclement formation made no sense.

Unless the Heavy Lasers weren't here as theater defense.

That was it. This was how the BETA overran Kyushu so quickly.

"Constantinople." I muttered, zooming my tactical map out. "That's what this is."

"What?" Ingrid asked.

"The massive Ottoman cannons that let them defeat the walls of the Constantinople and destroy the Byzantine Empire." I said. "Those lasers are here as siege guns."

"Okay, so how does that help us?"

"If those lasers get a chance to burn one of the strongpoints in our lines, we don't win." I said, looking at the images of each of the squadleaders. "We need take those things out of the equation."

"And how do you propose we do that?" Karen asked.

"If we stay on the ground and head straight away to stay in the shadow of this rock, we might be able to make it below the horizon." Jeremiah said slowly. "But we'd be miles further away, and that wouldn't solve the problem of getting closer."

"But they'll be sending the Grapplers for us soon." Ethan said. "Like backward pheasant hunters. We can't stay here."

He was right. But if they tried to escape on the ground, there was a good chance we could be pinned on the ground between multiple groups of hunting combat strains. Then it would all be over but for the screaming.

My hands went slack on the control yokes. This was it. It should have happened sooner, really. I'd survived my Eight Minutes of Death almost without noticing, and that kind of luck couldn't last for long. I'd assumed I could come up with a plan that would affect an event that spelled death for tens of millions, and this was what happened. Pride goeth, I suppose.

Light flashed behind me as the last of the Canary drones were eliminated. There wasn't enough space for them to circle low enough to be safe. Dying like that... might be preferable to being dragged down and killed by Tanks and Grapplers, actually.

It was too much. I couldn't help but chuckle at the sheer absurdity. What had I expected? That I would be able to accomplish something in this mess?

"Kranz, what's the plan?" Ingrid asked. "You said we needed to take the guns out of the equation. How do we do that?"

I said nothing.

"Michael, don't do this to me, you bastard." Ingrid said, the edge in her voice almost frantic.

Nothing like when I'd first spoken to her. She and her squad had faced annihilation then as we did now. What had changed?

Will you abandon them?

I wasn't going to. I would die alongside them now, for all the good it would do. There was no other option remaining.

Someone must start.

There was nothing I could do. No way to get out of this situation. Whatever I did would simply end in death. Now, or minutes or days or weeks later.

If no one is first, others cannot follow.

My hands clenched into fists, knuckles white under the gloves of my fortified suit. I wasn't dead yet, and things couldn't exactly get worse. Nothingness shattered, cracking spinning into a web of ideas, a few of them actually good.

"Seraph 0 to Warden. What is the status of our artillery support?"

"Unchanged." One of the Headquarters techs said. "MLRS are loaded and ready, guns prepared for rapid fire. But with twenty-eight Heavy Lasers and supporting batteries, we can't get enough through to-"

Pieces were falling into place now.

"I need the locations of the batteries. And Ticonderoga."

[x]

Hershel glared at his strategic plot displayed on the massive screen at the fornt of the command center. Nilokeras had been working. At midnight, Seraph Battalion had gone over the top and punched through the enemy line like an ice pick. They'd leveled the region's laser batteries with the speed and brutality of the Spetsnaz, and the artillerymen had exploited the opportunity to bring the hammer down on every major swarm in the area.

But that wasn't all. Kranz had been right in his estimation of the utility of offensive tactics, but Maxwell had seen no reason to hedge their bets to the extent the Avenger pilot had initially planned. Therefore, he'd committed three full regiments of his scratch command to the follow-on exploitation attacks.

For almost ninety minutes, it had been gloriously bloody; swarms dispersing under bombardment and being defeated in detail, or being herded together and pounded into oblivion.

Even now, it wasn't so much that the fighting was going poorly; it simply seemed much less significant. The south-east lines were near the breaking point; if those lasers hit them, they'd evaporate. If the Magnus Lux headed west, he was fairly confident he could eliminate them, but the headaches caused by their presence and the difficulty of defeating them meant he'd lose a fair chunk of Saga doing it. He had a lot of guns, but not enough for the usual saturation bombardment strategies to work.

The chunk he'd lose also happened to contain a considerable portion of the surviving population of the island.

"Sir, we are receiving a call for fire from Seraph-"

"Granted." General Maxwell said.

He pulled up the information for the requested fire mission. It was bizarre It didn't tear up the conventional wisdom and set it on fire like the Nilokeras fire plan; it simply involved a strange degree of specificity, and called for the use of a few batteries in notable sub-optimal locations, given the targets.

In a dozen places, the guns opened up once again.

About a minute later, as the shells started to arrive in bulk, the icons representing Seraph Battalion began to move. Very slowly.

[x]

"You know, when I joined the Army," Ingrid said, "I expected to be done with crawling once I finished OCS/Basic and got into Tactical Armor School."

Karen said something unintelligible. I was pretty sure it was in Japanese, and quite sure I didn't want to know what it was.

"I think it's ingenious, actually." Kanata said mildly. "Mud washes off. Impulsive shock spalling usually doesn't."

It must have been a bizarre sight, thirty-seven colossal humanoid war machines on hands and knees, crawling as though the world was resting on their shoulders.

The even more bizarre thing was that it was working. We'd made it more than half of the mile or so we needed to cover, and we hadn't been lasered once.

The artillery may have played a major part in that. With all the lasers looking skyward, they weren't trying to pick us out against the ground cover, which could have been bad if my line-of-sight estimations were off. That was one of the two big reasons for the barrage.

I checked my local meteorological data. The wind was holding

The other reason for the artillery was the heavy metal dust. We needed at least a moderately thick AL cloud on top of the lasers if part... C or D, probably, of the plan was going to work. The problem was that we couldn't dictate where on their flight path the lasers intercepted the AL shells, so without Orbital Bombardment, we couldn't place the cloud over them and let it drift down. But if the wind provided the lateral movement, we might make it.

The position of the pilot block while crawling was hardly comfortable; like flying, but far bumpier. That, at least, gave me something to focus on.

We were moving. I needed to stay moving. As long as the plan was in motion, I could consider the fact that we were all still very probably about to die without compromising my operational capabilities.

I glanced at my tactical plot. We were making surprisingly good time. I suppose it wasn't all that odd; we had the same scale advantage as a human attempting the same maneuver, and the TSFs wouldn't get tired, as long as the fuel held out.

Thankfully, we'd managed to take all our gear with us, including the all-important SSGs. Without those, we'd have much less ability to actually affect the situation.

The barrage continued. There was a clear difference between an intercepted AL shell and any of the others. The HE or ICM rounds would flash for a moment when hit; the AL shells would exploded into momentarily lingering cloud of incandescent white before fading.

We continued crawling. A few minutes later, we reached Point Aleph and resembled in a standing formation.

"This is Seraph to Warden." Jeremiah said. "Shift fire to Stage Two. Repeat, shift fire to stage two."

There was a short delay. "Warden acknowledges. Commencing stage two fire."

"Hackworth acknowledges. Commencing fire."

"Ticonderoga acknowledges. Commencing fire."

This was the part where it got bad.

"All units, begin advance."

Ten Squad Support Guns were raised to shoulder blocks as we lit drives and charged. Cruise missiles could take out Heavy Lasers, but with the supporting laser batteries in place that would take more missiles than we had.

So we charged, a small mountain sheltering us from the Heavy Lasers, frantically trying to bring down the first of two supporting batteries that needed to go. The sky turned into an ersatz sea of fire as beams from multiple batteries attempted to intercept our fire and the arriving warship shells.

Two things happened at the same time.

One of Tico's 8'' superheavy ICM rounds burst over the target battery.

Zaku 6 ate a laser.

I never worked out where it came from. The beam struck her in the front of the chest, just below the cockpit. Carbon flashed to gas, and the Zuikaku fell.

"Ren!" Karen screamed. For a second, I thought she would do something stupid.

She didn't, and the shell-gutted battery was dispatched.

I'd expected casualties.

It still hit me like a brick to the teeth.

We were committed now. Death or victory.

[x]

Captain Eric Weston, CO USS Ticonderoga, watched on the main CIC display as the first of the south-eastern supporting batteries was dispatched with a single casualty. He could feel his ship shudder faintly as her six eight-inch extended range rapid-fire naval rifles laid down a hail of steel.

The secondary battery was formidable, but victory would require use of his ship's primary weapons. They would put down the Heavy Lasers.

As long as the Tactical Armor flyboys could give him a chance to use them.

Fire icons began appearing in a line pointing at the second battery. Leap of faith.

"Fire tubes one through fifty-six."

[x]

The second battery was gone. It had only cost one more life, taken by the Heavy Lasers this time.

We only needed to kill a Fort now.

"Blizzard Wyrms, scatter advance!" Ingrid shouted. "Concentrate fire on Fort Serria Seven!"

"Marines, bring it down." Captain Garret ordered.

I raised my arms; I couldn't afford to conserve ammo now. I added my railguns to the storm of fire engulfing Sierra Seven, and sighted my Quenchguns on its center leg joint and went to rapid fire.

The flank of the targeted Fort-class erupted into a storm of bloody mist, and it began to collapse, its insane size giving it a sort of graceful slowness as it fell.

[x]

The BGM-164 Gungnir missile was not a smart weapon.

It was brilliant.

If the Gungnir lacked the raw speed of the current generation of Soviet Mosquito, it made up for it with three times the payload and five times the range, without accounting for it's truly superlative integral guidance capability.

The fifty-six missiles representing slightly less than a third of Ticonderoga's launch capacity did not so much fly over the landscape as they flowed over it, the flock of supersonic missiles moving like a shadow as they stuck to the terrain.

The missiles had a target, and that could not be changed. However, as the Midcourse Targeting Feed reported that the Fort designated Sierra Seven fell, the flock moved with uncanny unity, shifting course to ensure they stayed in the laser-shadow of the enormous alien.

Accelerating as they approached their targets, the missiles flashed through the engagement zones of the the destroyed laser batteries.

Inevitably, a few were picked off, but the salvo had been more than redundant, and the vision of the Heavy Lasers was hamstrung by the heavy metal dust surrounding them.

The missiles passed the surviving machines of Seraph Battalion, noting only the streams of suppressive fire the mobile weapons were pouring onto their target and making minor adjustments to avoid it.

Then, as one, the forty-eight surviving missiles washed over the slain Fort like a breaking wave.

The Heavy Lasers lower their enormous eyes and began preparing their beams to engage.

They never had a chance.

[x]

I shattered the skull of a Grappler and withdrew my blade, resetting as the next target approached.

It met a similar end. That sort of glaive work had become almost second nature at this point, and close combat against the BETA was surprisingly easy, until the numbers got out of hand.

We numbered thirty-two now. In the hours since the destruction of the Heavy Laser Battery, three more soldiers of Seraph Battalion had been forced to return to base. None of them had been rendered inoperable, but I couldn't afford to lose the machines to something as simple as damage-induced mechanical failure.

Operation Horus was only just beginning.

We'd resupplied and refueled twice from dropped Supply Containers, from Roswell with love. That had let us keep up with our prodigious ammo expenditure.

Everyone but me, anyway. I'd found myself using my glaive far more often than I'd have liked.

"And that," Ingrid swept her cannon across a group of Tank-class, "Should be all of them."

"Look." Karen said, a note of something I hadn't heard before in her voice.

I followed her prompt. There appeared to be something wrong with the eastern sky. There were no large cities that might have caught fire in the right direction, and we would have received an advisory if there'd been a nuclear launch.

"The sun." Kanata said. "We survived the night."

I really should have thought of that.

It was, I realized, the first time I'd seen the sun of this world.

It was obscured by a haze of distant smoke and the dust on the wind, and that did nothing more than serve to enhance its beauty.

Light swept across the land, the shadows of night dissipating at its touch. As the light of day reached the battered but intact skin of my Avenger, realization struck.

The fight wasn't hopeless. The dawn would come.

"Warden Actual to Seraph Leads." General Maxwell sounded tired, but also... Something else. "That's more than enough; the artillery boys are ready."

"Come on home."

Jump Units flared to life, and thirty-two angels of ash and mud rose into the sky.

There was a war to win.


	3. Chapter 3

I woke up sometime around 1600 hours, surprisingly refreshed. Despite it's relatively spartan appearance, the bunk was surprisingly comfortable. Apparently, advanced material science has its perks.

Tactical Armor pilots got their own (very small) rooms. Apparently, I'd been assigned a bunk in officer country, meaning my room was slightly less small. There wasn't actually anything in it worth mentioning, but it was still nice.

I took a few minute to get ready and change into the provided uniform. Fortunately, military-issue electric razors can only change so much. That done, I decided to make my way to the mess hall. I'd eaten that morning, before I went to sleep; the food hadn't been as bad as I'd expected.

Not to say that is wasn't _bad_ by any stretch of the imagination, it was at least vaguely edible.

I wasn't sure what I expected to happen when I got to the mess, but it certainly wasn't an angry mob.

Or a mob in general. It took a few seconds after the two dozen or so assorted pilots jumped at me just as I walked through the door to realize that no one was attempting to murder me.

"Alright people, nothing to see here." Kanata said, appearing out of the crowd. "Let's all get back to our delicious synthetic gruel. He's probably radioactive anyway... Yes, that means you, Hoshijiro."

"Anyway, the General wanted me to get you up to speed on the situation, which means we probably don't have time for you to be novelty of the week" Kanata said, as the pilots dispersed. "You should probably get some synthetic gruel, too. We'll be going back out before too long."

"How have things been going?" I asked, as we walked toward the serving counter.

"On what scale?" Kanata replied.

"Start local, work up."

"Right here? Pretty good." He said, as we both accepted our bowls of synthetic gruel. "The artillery attack went well."

He shook his head. "Actually, 'well' is somewhat misleading. It went well on an absurd scale. Today's been pretty quiet, and the BETA don't just _stop_ an offensive. The status has been pretty much the same on the south-east lines, though..."

"What?"

"There are still a _lot_ of BETA here. They could probably push through to the Pacific." Kanata shrugged. "Either way, they seem to be pausing to replenish their numbers before they assemble any more significant assault swarms. That's good for us."

He stopped, glancing up at the ceiling. "We did it, somehow. Everyone still alive on Kyushu is behind our Main Line of Resistance."

I almost, _almost_ didn't want to ask. A number would define it, make the loss of life _concrete_.

But I had to know. In the end, it's always better to know.

"How many."

"The whole population of the Nagasaki and Saga prefectures." Kanata said. "Two point two million people. As well as between five and five and a half million from the other regions."

Five million dead. At least. _Years_ ' worth of the Great Leap Forward in a single day.

The deaths on the battlefield had shocked me. This was simply... numbing.

"It's amazing." Kanata said.

I looked back at him. He didn't seem distraught talking about the casualties, at least not to the extent I might have expected.

"I saw the Ministry of Defense's predictions for an incursion of this size. According to that, we're all dead." Kanata said plainly. "Every unit here destroyed or evacuated and unfit for combat. Massive civilian casualties; the report was fairly vague about the specifics, but there wasn't much discussion given to long-distance evacuation or housing. Now, though..."

"We haven't won yet."

"But we have a chance, now." Kanata said, sitting down. "That stability fix worked like a charm, and we're only a couple hours behind schedule now."

"That's probably fine." I took a sip, or maybe a bite, of my synthetic gruel. It was awful. "The schedule for the evacuation includes a _lot_ of margin."

"Probably for the best." Kanata said. "Anyway, the fighting in Honshu is... ongoing. The main body of Army Group One has reached Hiroshima, though the city garrison is still holding. It looks they're masking the city while the main swarm swings around north."

That was troubling. Not so much the event itself, but that the BETA were using a maneuver like that. It seemed uncharacteristic for them to not attack a large concentration of pre-processed raw materials, but this was at least a year early for the Superior to be active. Probably.

That would have to stay a secondary concern for now. Figuring out a way to Rackham the Superior could wait.

"Is there anything else happening?" I asked.

The gruel really was terrible.

"Not as such, no." Kanata said. "Indonesia and Siberia have been pretty quiet; apparently SpaceCom thinks they lined up most of their surplus in this region at Cheorwon for this. Lucky us."

"Yeah. Now we just need to figure out how to hold out against that for a week or so and we're gold."

"What's your plan for that, by the way?" Kanata asked.

I paused. "Would you believe me if I said I didn't have one?"

"No. You might not have any good ones, but-"

"Right." I said. "The usual 'stand in a line and shoot aliens' isn't going to work here, and we don't have enough mortars to set up decent leafblower list, so-"

"Mortars?" Kanata asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah. Range isn't great, and the high arc means that the shells are more exposed to lasers, but they're cheap and the shells are cheap, and the high angle means they'd be great for tossing submunitions or smart rounds on Destroyers."

"I know what they are. I was wondering more what their relevance would be." He frowned. "What would be the platform?"

"That's kind of the tricky part." I tilted my head slightly. "Infantry would be fairly high-risk and might not be able to handle the sort of heavy automortar the plan would call for, and conventional light vehicles would limit their utility in offensive operations."

"They wouldn't necessarily have to be offensive weapons." Kanata said, resting his chin on his fingers. "We proved this morning that bold aggressive action _can_ neutralize a lot of the advantages that the Destroyer-class usually enjoys."

His eyes narrowed. "And my God I just realized what a bloodbath it's going to be when _certain_ people hear that. Maybe tone that down in your AARs and safe the active-voice laconic for your memoirs."

"You're hilarious."

"By the way, if you ever want a chance to write those, remember Karen." He paused. "Her vision is based on movement, so if Escape and Evasion fails, hold _very_ still and she might not notice you."

I gave him a blank stare.

"Seriously, though, she's been looking for you, so you might want to just lock yourself in that Attacker until it's time to sortie. I heard the engineering chief wanted to see you, so heading down to the hanger might not be a bad idea, regardless."

[x]

"So this is yours, right?" The Tactical Armor Engineering Chief said, pointing her thumb at my A-12 Avenger.

"That is mine, yes." I responded.

I'd decided to take Kanata's advice; I'd had about as much synthetic gruel as I could handle in one sitting anyway. Now I was being stared down by the Engineering Chief, who was one of the more intimidating people I've ever met. She was tall, with an impressively high center of gravity

"I'd expect this kind of over-engineered crap from the Guard. Though we were better that." She shook her head. "It's at least halfway decent, which to be honest is more than I was expecting from the A-12. Anyway, Sasaki Robinson, at your service."

"Yes. I heard you wanted to see me?" Never, ever a good idea to antagonize someone who decides whether or not your giant robot works next time you go battle alien monstrosities.

"I had a couple of questions about how you wanted this thing fixed up. First of all; elephant in the room, ammo." She held up a large, jet-black spitzer bullet. "For the forearm railguns. Alloy steel body, ultra-high-melt explosive filler, and tungsten penetrator head with a Super Graphene laminate." 

I nodded.

"The laminate solves the barrel-wear problem rather elegantly. It conducts properly, and its degeneration protects both the contact rails and projectile from excessive friction damage, as well as carrying away a significant portion of the waste heat." The Engineering Chief glance at me. "Am I on the right track?"

I nodded. I'd know all that, somehow, but that just meant I had a decent idea of how impressive it was that Chief Robinson had figured it all out so quickly.

"And the laminate breakdown is probably what causes the odd-colored muzzle flashes." Sasaki finished. "Anyway, the material cost of each round is fairly low, but the fact that it's a railgun means the manufacturing tolerance is incredibly tight. I'm not sure we have the facilities to produce field-expedient rounds that won't just shred the guns."

"Makes sense."

"Moving on, we have the shoulder cannons." She shook her head. "Quenchguns. Not something I'd have expected to see, but I know the theory, at least. It should be better able to tolerate low-quality ammo-"

"Yeah. The suspensive field would reduce the chance of a catastrophically failing shell damaging the propulsive coils." I considered for a moment. "The muzzle velocity and thermal efficiency would take a hit, but it could be done."

"And the backpack railguns. Not sure why you'd switch to a coilgun for the cannons and back for howitzers, but they're there."

"It's a thermal efficiency thing." I answered. "The Quenchguns would run into trouble if they tried to get the rate of fire the backpack rails need. This is better for super-high-velocity burst fire."

"Fair enough." The Engineering Chief shrugged. "Anyway, ammo runs into similar problems as the chainguns, so I'm not making any promises. All in all, weapons, at least, are nice."

She looked up at the Avenger.

Standing at the foot of the machine, it really was an impressive sight. The skin armor of the machine was a sort of gunmetal color, halfway between field grey and burnished silver. It was built more heavily than most of the TSFs I'd seen. Even if their waists didn't seem nearly as absurdly skinny when I was looking at them in person, I still preferred the _solidity_ of the Attackers.

In a certain light, I could see how the Avenger might look almost heroic.

"On the one hand, I'm glad that they've finally started to get some metal back into these frames. With the kind of torque this kind of monster is generating, the TiW-fulleride skeleton frame might actually save weight." She sighed. "On the other hand, the actuators and booster servos _reek_ of overachievement. Yet another step closer to the Tiger."

That was a rather interesting point of view, and quite possibly a valid one. Intriguing.

"The nuke plant... isn't nearly as bad as I'd have expected."

"How do you mean?"

"It's light enough to not to compromise the system as a whole." Sasaki said. "Granted, when you account for the secondary heat management and shielding systems and the marginal weight of the MDH thrusters, it's not as favorable in comparison to a straight chemical. But when you account for the added _benefits_ of the atomic core."

She paused. "Far more disposable power, which makes the EM weaponry suite possible, and no fuel limit on range. Plus, the weight won't change during operation unless something has gone _seriously_ wrong, so it doesn't have to be built to worry about stability changing as it uses up its fuel."

"Is that a concern?" I asked.

"More than you'd expect. No combat-operable TSF carries less than a dozen tons of fuel, and most hold a lot more. Almost all of that is going to be below the thing's center of gravity, so..."

"I see."

"Anyway, for a third-gen thing, it really could be worse." Sasaki looked up at the shoulder cannons. "I'll see what I can do about the Quenchgun ammo, but I've got a lot on my plate now. Unfortunately, we had _way_ fewer KIAs today than normal for operations at this intensity, so maintenance and turnaround work is proportionally higher." 

[x]

"And so I have taken command of this operation." Brigadier General Hershel Maxwell said, looking at the wall monitor, each of the sixteen comm windows open on the screen displaying the face of a different armchair general or _elected official_.

"Naturally, I am fully prepared to defer to an appropriate authority and cede command to a superior officer, if you determine that the scale of operations has grown beyond what is appropriate for my rank." The corners of his lips twitched upward. "As so long as he is present in my area of operations, of course, as per UN protocol."

There was a short pause.

"And you're... request." One of the penguins said. "It is... presumptuous, to say the least."

"It is a listing of facts, and my conclusions thereon. While I understand that directness can be... uncommon, and I do not claim to be an oracle, it might pay to remember that everything in war is simple."

A misquotation, perhaps, though the literal words were still relevant, if not how Clausewitz might have intended them.

"You base your conclusion on several assumptions." Another suit said. "If-"

"The BETA are erratic, but there are a number of constants in their behavior. Like any force, those constants are largely driven by the limitations of their capabilities. They behave as a blunt instrument because they _are_ a blunt instrument. You fence with a rapier, not a sledgehammer."

He looked at the top-left corner of the monitor, where he'd concentrated the Japanese leadership's windows. "And you don't really want my assumptions to be wrong. If they mask my line here like they're doing in Hiroshima, the Imperial Capital burns."

"It is not your place to comment on such matters." The Shogunate representative said, almost immediately.

"We will consider your report and continue to monitor the situation. Continue to hold in Saga and await further orders."

The display cut out.

Hershel clasped his hands in front of his mouth, considering the meeting. He smirked. The UN regional leadership committee hadn't rejected he flat out, meaning he had the necessary toehold, at least.

Maybe they could still win this after all.

[x]

Ingrid Jensen stopped on the gangway catwalk in front of the A-12 Avenger prototype's berth. The cockpit was sealed; based on the ventral position of the hatch, it looked like the next-generation Tactical Surface Attacker had same Tungsten-Titanium Fulleride 'bathtub' protecting the pilot as her A-10C.

She tapped open the maintenance umbilical status readout. Simulation in progress. Huh. A few more keystrokes opened and external view on the ongoing simulation, treating her to the view of what appeared to be a platoon of Tank-class methamphetamine addicts charging across an open field for a few moments before being reduced to a bloody mess.

Shifting the view, Ingrid found him. Seraph 1, or Seraph 0, or whatever his designation was now. He strafed just over the ground, Jump Units and hip thrusters flaring.

It was interesting; Michael was using the angled placement of the Jump units for comparatively easy control of the unwieldy Avenger, with the auxiliaries providing an opposing force to keep him balanced. The tactic was effective, but you didn't use it unless you were desperate due to its massive fuel consumption...

...Which wouldn't be a problem. The Avenger's Americium-Thorium burnable-poisoned core would be good well into the next millennium, and it wasn't like Michael was about to run out of _atmosphere_ to feed the MDH engines any time soon.

Why the hell wasn't this thing in mass production yet?

Ingrid watched as the waves of hyperactive BETA converged on the Avenger, advancing through a cascade of gunfire. The Attacker moved, staying clear of areas where the BETA massed and advanced as it cleared them with canister and airburst shot. It looked like Michael was only using his cannons for breaking up masses, using his chainguns and forearm railguns to sweep the advancing waves.

Kranz wasn't moving with anything like the agility of a current TSF, and Ingrid might have expected a bit more polish from a test pilot, but...

It reminded her of something she'd read as a child. For all the perception of armored knights as slow, clanking, juggernauts, a properly made and fitted suit of Gothic Plate distributed its weight across the body remarkably well, enabling feats of athleticism shocking for a man wearing fifty pounds of metal.

Eventually, the inevitable happened. Michael was surrounded by successive converging waves of BETA. He drew his glaive and began to cut; broad sweeping slashes interspersed with forearm railgun fire against Tanks and Grapplers, violent stabs against the occasional Destroyer.

Not long thereafter, Michael was rammed by a Destroyer-class that had broken 200 kph and the simulation ended. Ingrid looked up as the Avenger cockpit armor hatch opened and the control unit rose out.

"Captain Jensen." he said, nodding.

"Ingrid is fine." Ingrid replied, gesturing at the instrument panel. "So what was that about?"

"Asymmetric simulator training?"

She shook her head. "No. The speed seemed a bit... high."

"I set the BETA to 130% nominal overland and tactical speed."

"Why would you _do_ that?"

"The Attacker doesn't really do high-g maneuvers, so the elevated speed isn't encouraging me to rely on techniques that would be difficult to execute outside of fixed simulation." Michael said. "And elevated speed does not exaggerate the effectiveness of area-attack weapons, as increasing enemy numbers does."

Ingrid rolled her eyes. "No. Why do you feel the need to make the one-to-one sim _even harder_?"

"I have limited ammo for my EM weapons, and the sim doesn't really recreate that very well." Michael looked down at the armor plate in front of his cockpit hatch.

"So I need to learn how to do this." A short, almost imperceptible pause. "Right."

"Well, fighting like that isn't going to help." Ingrid glanced at the instrument panel. "Much, anyway. It might be good for technical skill, but that's almost secondary."

She stepped out onto the gantry proper. "First of all, if you're ever fighting the xenos alone, someone has _seriously_ fucked up. Whatever the mount pylons might make you think you can do, one unit can't cover more than a ninety degree arc without losing efficiency."

Ingrid looked back at the Avenger. "Though I guess neither of us have the pylons, and we can _probably_ spread fire to one-twenty degrees without losing efficiency. We Attackers are, after all, superior in _all_ respects to lesser soldiers. But that only makes it more important that we fight effectively together; each of us drives up the cost for the xenos to come close enough to hurt any one member of the group."

"Unless it's a Destroyer rush." Michael said. "That seems like a recurring problem."

"Shut up." Ingrid said, turning away and crossing her arms in an enormously exaggerated pout. "Anyway, orders have come down. Command is breaking up the attack squadron to sortie with some of the Japanese rookies. Provide a base of fire so they can get blooded while the enemy concentration is fairly low without too many of them getting killed, that sort of thing."

"I take it you don't like that?"

"I'm of the opinion that you don't split an Attack Squadron into anything less than half-squads." Ingrid said.

Michael frowned. "And this mission is..."

"Elements." Ingrid spat. "You and me running herd on a dozen local rookies." 

[x]

I stood slightly off to the side as Ingrid inspected the assembled squad, four files of callow youths three ranks deep. Whatever the insignias on their fortified suits said, they were not yet ready for battle. I'd seen enough Tactical Armor soldiers in the past few hours to get a good idea of their bearing, at least enough to say that these kids didn't have it. They were terrified, and not ready for battle.

But man plans. God laughs.

"Alright, kids, listen up." Ingrid began. "I've got good news and bad news. Bad news is that there are an _abstractly_ large number of aliens out there, every one of them intent on devouring you and everyone you know and love. And we're about to go fight them. The good news is that I've been around this block often enough that if you follow my orders and keep your head on straight, you might survive."

One of the pilots, a girl in the front row, raised a hand. Ingrid nodded at her.

"Ma'am, what about him?" She said glancing in my direction."

"He has never been operationally deployed or engaged in combat." Ingrid replied. "Because as we all know, no mission not listed on the official records has ever occurred, and his file is as blank as any of yours."

I was a secret agent. First I'd heard of it, but still cool.

"Now, here is how we're going to work this." Ingrid said. "We'll be flying this mission modified assault style. However much Samurai Honor standoff range and heavy weapons lacks, it offers a number of ways to make up for inexperienced personnel and is well suited for this situation. Accordingly, some alterations have been made to your standard loadouts to reflect this; the armorers are already enacting the changes."

Ingrid looked to the side, and I stepped forward. We hadn't scripted this, for a number of reasons, but we'd worked out a decent outline.

"What," I asked, looking at the assembled rookies, "Is the first duty of a surface pilot?"

The rookie pilots, whom I noted were in fact _all_ female, appeared uncertain despite their considerable efforts to remain at attention.

"Survive." I said.

They weren't expecting that. Good.

"Protecting your nation, people, and sovereign, destroying the enemies of man, these are all _essential_ duties." Short pause, look back at them intensely. "However, each one of them flows from the same spring. Careful analysis of after action reports demonstrates that, on nearly all mission types, dead personnel have exceptionally low success rates."

Short pause, slightly more somber. "The BETA win through attrition. Don't let them. Cover you wingman, shoot straight, and conserve ammo. Hold out long enough and we win."

"On that note." Ingrid raised a hand, activating a projection display with her suit comms. "This is our area of operations. We will be conducting active area defense/area denial operations, with a fallback point here."

She tapped a spot at the base of the map. "Final Protective Fire has been pre-planned, with several flexible contingencies..."

[x]

I took a deep breath as my fortified suit's locking bolts connected with the feedback interface of my Avenger's control unit, which slid back into its protected combat position. Somehow, I'd become the veteran, the one of two anchors of competency in the unit.

"Control to Swordwind squad. You are cleared to takeoff for defensive sortie."

"Sword 1, confirmed." Ingrid said.

This was nothing like launching for Operation Nilokeras. Then, the worst had been stoic silence. As Ingrid confirmed each of the rookies was go for launch, it was clear that they were still afraid. Or, at the very least, too focused on what they saw as their highly probable deaths to go about the rather taxing business of fighting.

"Sword 2, you are clear for launch."

Right, there was that. "Sword 2, launching." 

Jump 1 - Launch Thrust

Jump 2 - Launch Thrust

Maybe I should have been concerned by how quickly the acceleration strain of launch was becoming a sort of routine hassle.

I gained altitude briefly; the laser threat had been reduced enough that flying a bit higher was an acceptable risk in exchange for faster and more efficient travel. Four elements of three F-15J Kagerou units each formed in front of me, and as Ingrid's A-10C rose into position, I reduced thrust and slid back into the wingman's position.

There was still nervous chatter coming over the squadron comms network. We were going into battle; that had to be stopped before it could snowball. If I couldn't raise their spirits, I had to at least find a way to distract them. I'd noticed when setting up my simulator training that a considerable volume of entertainment media from home somehow found its way onto one of the auxiliary memory banks of the Avenger's operation computer. Perhaps some musical accompaniment would help?

I looked through the list, chose something situationally appropriate, and played it on general broadcast.

At least the rookies stopped talking until we got to the AO.

[x]

Selena Teller was not happy to hear the IMMEDIATE-priority message tone. With the BETA slightly more than four hundred miles away from Tokyo, and less than two hundred miles from Kyoto, her team already had its hands full keeping Imperial High Command from going full retard. He meeting with Taka...Teriyaki... had gone better than expected. She'd aimed to get him to push to ease up on the Order 227 bullshit, and spinning it as 'keeping forces intact to honor the sacrifices of those still fighting in Kyushu' had been surprisingly effective.

That said, she was worried about what would happen when the BETA hit Kyoto. Selena wasn't _exactly_ military, but she knew a bad idea when she saw one. Usually. The nobility would loathe the idea of abandoning the city, and in this sort of situation the only opinions that mattered were those of the Powers-That-Be and of the fighting men, most of whom would fall right in with the nobles.

And now this. Apparently, some asshole was running around down in Kyushu with a TSA that wasn't in production yet, and he didn't even have the decency to exist first. Ergo, Selena gave it something like even odds that he was one of theirs.

"Tolkachev, you there?" Selena asked, dialing.

"Yes?"

"What is the status on the CLEAR NIGHT contingency?"

"Conservatively? Two of five right this second."

"Alright. That's good enough for now." Selena sent the requisite files. "I need you to look into something else for me."

[x]

"Contact imminent." Ingrid shouted. "Formation Echelon Left."

Jump Units flaring, I slid to side, moving with Flight 4 of Swordwind Squadron. The Echelon formation arranged the flights in a staggered line pointing toward the enemy, with each flight further toward the center of the BETA advance than the one in front of it. It would allow the squad to withdraw laterally as one body; those who had the furthest to travel had the most time to get clear. From there, we could hit the flanks of this attack or fall back to Point Bravo and reengage there.

"It looks like its heavy on Destroyers." Ingrid announced.

"Can we fight Destroyer-class like this?" Swordwind 8 said, hesitant. "Shouldn't we move to jump over them and engage-"

"Not unless you want to get hammered by a Grappler." Ingrid said. "Or maybe Tank-class are more your thing."

"See that ridge there?" I said, pointing. "A Destroyer's frontal carapace protects the front, top, and sides of the forward half of its body, but don't have any protection on the bottom. As they crest the hill, the grade is steep enough that we have a window of opportunity to fire into their heads and legs."

A ribbon of red as tall as a man appeared along the crest of the ridge in my display, shared with the rookies via the Joint Target Designation System. Their machines _are_ still F-15s, however modified they may be.

"Keep your guns pointed into your area of responsibility. Range for the second row is one kilometer, so adjust for your position and account for ballistic drop. Use long bursts to maximize odds of a hit, but do _not_ waste ammo. If it moves, it dies, if it dies, you move on." Ingrid sounded almost eager as a thin plume of dust rose from behind the hill. "Now kill them all."

As the beaked tip of the first Destroyer's carapace crossed the ridge, I opened up with both of my assault cannons. In the second it took the rounds to arrive, the monster rose above the hill. Multiple slugs plunged into the bottom of its thorax, and it dropped.

All along the staggered line, chainguns spat fire. No unit carried fewer than two weapons; and if the hail of fire was nothing like what Seraph Battalion had been able to lay down, it was still impressive.

Nearly all of the Destroyers crossing the hill dropped. Nearly. Ingrid and I were the goalkeepers. She was stationed even further to the flank than Flight 1, but that would only give her lines of fire on Destroyers crossing the half of the field opposite her. I had to kill the ones too close for her to get a solid angle. A trio of quenchgun shots cleared my area of responsibility, and Ingrid's rotary cannons dropped the rest.

Then she brought her Avengers to bear on the ridge, and the front stabilized. Some of the Destroyers had enough momentum to carry them over the ridge after they were perforated; others dropped back down the slope and tripped up those climbing behind them.

"We're doing it!" Swordwind 4 said, eyes wide in the comm window as she trained two assault cannons and a support assault cannon on the enemy.

I had to break out my vambrace railguns once in the next few minutes, to sweep the front when a particularly large number of Destroyers crossed at once. Other than that, it was going well. Almost too well, considering we were chaingunning a Destroyer charge head-on. Either the BETA were throwing away several thousand Destroyer-class combat organisms for no particular gain, or...

I launched a recon shell. It picked up a large number of small, high-intensity heat sources moving fairly quickly parallel to the main swarm. A bunch of Tank-class BETA were waiting right along our planned path of withdrawal would probably be bad.

"Ingrid," I said, opening a private channel, "This could be problematic."

She looked over the data for a moment before replying. "Damnit."

The Tanks weren't going to go away just because we knew they were there.

"This is Swordwind lead to Fire Control. Large destroyer group, estimate regiment-scale, formed and charging. Immediate fire support, Danger Close."

"Fire control confirming, Destroyer-class regiment danger close. Splash in thirty."

"Now, listen up." Ingrid said, on general broadcast. "The enemy is moving to outflank us, but we're not going to let that happen. Now, we will withdraw laterally as planned, except that we will do so ready to engage Tank-class BETA as we move into the terrain unfavorable to the Destroyer-class. Now, MOVE!" 

[x]

Pilot Yukiko Yamada, Swordwind 10, threw her F-15J into a boosted jump perpendicular to the oncoming wave of Destroyer-class. Swordwind 14, the... Revenger, or something like that, stayed on the group. He took off a second later, just as the first howitzer rounds impacted.

Yukiko had some experience with artillery. She'd observed a barrage during a live-fire training exercise, and had some practice with calling for fire in combined-arms operations practice in JIVES training. This was completely different.

The one-hundred and seventy-five millimeter rounds on a low-angle trajectory came in right over her head with a sound like a freight train. Then they detonated, and for a moment she thought the world was ending. It seemed impossible than any of the BETA could live through that.

"Prepare to engage." Swordwind 14 said, broadcasting to Flight 3 and Flight 4. "Don't let them get close."

He raised his arms, but rather than firing his assault cannons, the guns built into the shields on his arms burst to life, blue-white flashes heralding the death of swaths of Tanks. Yukiko opened fire with both of her assault cannons, watching as BETA died under her sights.

"Be careful, Yukiko. We could be out here all night" Swordwind 14 said, using her first name. In her surprise, it took Yukiko a moment to realize it was a closed two-way transmission. "Tanks only need a couple of rounds, so use bursts if you aren't sweeping a large group."

"Of... Of course. Yes, sir. I'm sorry." Yukiko muttered, glancing down.

"Don't be." Swordwind 14 said, firing a pair of canister rounds from his shoulder cannons. "Just be glad it was a teaching moment for you rather than everyone else."

She wasn't really sure what to say to that. She reloaded her chainguns, and the fight continued. The artillery fire, which had slowed from the initial furious bombardment, came to a stop, and the Tank-class continued their attack, and the human soldier sent them back in the same old way.

Then one of Yukiko's primary optics went dark. She felt the feedback of her TSF shift, and horrible scraping-screeching sound began reverberating through the cockpit.

A Tank-class BETA had latched onto her! It would try to chew through her armor and disable her TSF. Tanks killed more _Eishi_ than any other combat strain; what was she supposed to do here?

A tremor ran through her frame, transmitted to her by the feedback system, and her vision went clear in a rush of bloody mist. To the side, Swordwind 14 stood, arm-shield guns point at, no, just in front of her.

"Ingrid's been showing off with her Javelins, but that's something best left for the professionals."

Yukiko glanced at the other Surface Attacker. The front of the A-10C, up to the cockpit block, was dyed red, and the ground around it was covered with dismembered Tank-class pieces.

Jealousy is a terrible thing.

[x]

Karen sat in the cockpit of her Zuikaku, waiting to be cleared for launch. Ever since the completion of Nilokeras, the American commander had been rotating units through the front lines far too quickly. A squad would be put on the line for an hour or three, then the artillery would lay down a rolling barrage to cover them as a fresh unit switched in.

The strategy was running high laser exposure risks and burning lots of fuel in maneuvers that seemed to have nothing to do with killing the BETA.

"Alright, we've got the 23rd Provisional coming in for a landing, then you're up, Zaku Squad."

"Copy that." Karen muttered.

They'd deployed the rookie squadrons. They had to be sent into their first battle sometime or another, but doing it in a situation like this seemed...

As a cloud of sparks rose above the horizon, the drive flares of the returning TSFs, Karen realized that she wasn't sure. As they moved closer, she focused her optics on them, counting the individual pairs of lights.

Fourteen. Two TSAs plus twelve rookies meant... that they'd all made it back. Deploying the rookies, at least here, had worked.

Just like Operation Horus had worked so far.

Karen slumped in her seat, or as much as the restraining bolts would allow. What was going on?


	4. Chapter 4

Vice Admiral Hornmyer looked at the main display of the Flag Information Center of the _USS George Washington_. They were nearly at engagement range; had the BETA possessed sea-skimmers, Task Force Tango Delta would already be at General Quarters. As it was, he had about a thirty minutes before the lead elements of the formation entered the Extreme-Range Laser Hazard Zone.

He'd never been completely comfortable at sea. It simply wasn't quite the same as deep space. That hardly mattered, though; the Navy was the only chance he was likely to find to make a meaningful restitution to the world he'd failed.

It was time to finalize his plan of attack.

[x]

As dawn approached on the ninth of July, 1998, the port city of Nagasaki was bathed in light.

More than four dozen large container ships lay in a variety of berthings, all covered in glimmering constellations of lights as they were frantically prepared for one final journey. On each of them, the massive deck hatches normally used to facilitate rapid loading and unloading of cargo had been opened, both for moving heavy equipment and assisting with ventilation.

On a few ships, those in proper dock slips where work had begun first, visible progress had actually been made. The arrays of floodlights of high but wildly varying intensities illuminating the work site cast a bizarre pattern of shadows on the mostly-flat metal floors stretching across the lower holds of those vessels.

On a slightly larger number of ships, the points of light generated by a variety of construction tools appeared suspended throughout the interior as workers assembled a series of horizontal frames strung between the pre-existing vertical scaffolding on which to lay the floors. On most of the ships, the activity was limited to a few groups scattered along the hull and a river of light along the keel.

Further from the ocean, in the city proper, crews worked to gather the materials needed to fuel the conversion of the ships, the city eating itself to give its people a chance at life.

[x]

"So, Ingrid." I said, setting down my bowl of synthetic gruel. "It seems that I've become some sort of secret agent. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"Absolutely nothing." Ingrid said, brushing a strand of white hair out from in front of her face and taking a spoonful of her nutrient composite. "By the way, _do_ you actually eat a dose flying that thing?"

"According to the dosimeter, no."

Ingrid paused. "Dosimeter. Tell me more."

"I've got a couple, actually." I'd checked the manual on this one; radiation was something you generally wanted to be careful with. "The one under the seat is probably the most useful. It's right between me and the actual reactor vessel, and accounts for all the shielding and spacing provided by the frame and bathtub."

"Fair." Ingrid shrugged. "I still would have expected it would have been harder to get people to sign up to wear a nuclear reactor into battle."

"I'm not _wearing_ it." I said, setting the printouts I'd made on the table. "It's multiple whole meters away. Plus, I figure that if it raises my odds of getting cancer in two decades, it probably decreases the chance I get eaten by a BETA in the next two days a fair bit more."

"Point." Ingrid frowned, looking at her gruel. "I'm wondering if I should put in to have my cannon barrels swapped out."

"Oh?"

She shrugged. "Each set is only good for a couple hundred thousand rounds, nominally, though that assumes long bursts and fairly poor firing conditions. I was halfway through the current set when all this started. I don't really _need_ to swap them out yet, but..."

"If things go wrong, you don't want the big guns to melt on you." She nodded. "I'd do it. This seems like the sort war where things go pretty well until they really don't."

Neither of us said anything for a little bit after that; it took the opportunity to look over the information I'd printed out.

At present, we were facing something like three hundred thousand and change BETA of assorted combat strains. They continued to cross the strait from Korea at a rate of a bit more than twelve thousand per hour. About a third of those stayed on Kyushu to fight us. The rest went north, though there was a note that most of the Laser-class were saying here to make up for the ongoing shortfall.

Even if that was rather troublesome for us, it was a good thing from certain points of view. Opportunity cost affected the BETA just as much as it did us, and for every laser strain that was staying to maintain Army Group Two's artillery shield was _not_ vaporizing TSFs withdrawing from contact with Army Group One.

As a result of that, there were a lot of units in Honshu falling back with heavy casualties and severe mechanical damage. That was a good thing, in that far fewer units were being overwhelmed and annihilated than I was fairly sure had happened initially. That was a good thing, large-scale, even if I really wouldn't have minded somewhat fewer lasers. Or a lot fewer lasers.

In other news, it appeared that several of the Hives in China, Mongolia, and one in southern Siberia had deployed large swarms toward Korea, all with extremely high concentrations of Destroyer-class. That report included what appeared to be an aerial photo of a Destroyer column more than twenty miles long; I had no idea how it had been taken, but it was breathtaking.

That was concerning, but the ultimate constraints of time and distance meant that it would be at least a week before those strategic reserve swarms were in position to pose a threat.

On a somewhat smaller scale, Sasaki had sent a note saying that she'd worked out a design for field-expedient quenchgun airburst shells. That was quite possibly the best news I'd ever received from anyone, on any topic, ever. It would _really_ suck if I died because I couldn't get ammo for my EM weapons.

Some of the other stuff I'd prepared was on topics of less immediate relevance. History, technology, geopolitics, military science... Things that were actually pleasant to read.

In particular, the history was almost surreal. A lot of super-space-race was weird, though I did wonder how close we could have come back home if we hadn't abandoned the concept of nuclear rocketry. Beyond that, a lot of the space exploration, and then TSF, technology, seemed to stand in stark contrast to... pretty much everything else. I wonder if the same could be said of our computational and information technologies.

More recently, one Ronald Wilson Reagan had served as President of the United States of America from 1984 to 1992, the only name on the list that I recognized. Here, he was generally regarded well for his strong economic policy in correcting or reversing damage caused on that front by the BETA war, as well as aggressive plans to develop military and productive infrastructure aiming to allow a protracted effort against the aliens.

The more things change, I suppose. Though that did raise more than a few interesting questions about a number of topics.

I got to the bottom of the stack. Quantum Causality.

After reading through one of the few early publications on the subject, it seemed clear that whatever information had been released before the whole subject was classified had been redacted and replaced with gibberish. What I was reading may as well have been a study on the Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.

[x]

General Maxwell watched the main strategic repeater as Task Force Tango Delta began their assault.

The main body of the task force keeping station near Nobeoka, near the middle of the eastern coast of Kyushu. Together with the _Nimitz_ -class carrier _George Washington,_ the highly modernized _Iowa_ -class battleship _USS Kentucky_ and the more recent forty-thousand-ton nuclear battlecruiser _USS Alaska_ formed the core of the task force. The battlewagons, together with the ballistic heavy cruisers _USS Helena_ and _USS Anchorage_ and a number of light cruisers and destroyers, opened fire on the BETA inland, laying down an AL cloud as the fleet carrier _Washington_ and strike carrier _USS Essex_ launched TSFs.

The _Helena_ -class ships were interesting. Only _Helena_ herself, the lead ship of the class, was more than a year old. Each of the ships carried five three-gun turrets armed with 10''/65 caliber rapid-fire long range electrothermal-chemical guns. As far as I could tell, it was the CG(X) concept, except it existed and didn't suck.

Under the cover of the heavy shellfire, the F-14E Tomcats of the task force advanced toward the locations of known BETA groups. Broadly speaking, it was essentially a waterborne culling operation. Task Force Tango Delta simply lacked the capacity to support enough TSFs to turn around the second front against Army Group Two on their own.

But the more they did, the more time the shattered formations on that front would have time to rally and ready defenses, and the more time we would have until we had to worry about the BETA crossing the bay into Nagasaki.

And every BETA they killed was one fewer that was pressing on our line.

"It looks like their attack should go well." General Maxwell said, turning away from the Strategic Repeater and looking at me. "Argyre is go, them."

Argyre. The second phase of Operation Horus.

I tilted my head slightly. "I think you could say Argyre was go the moment Nilokeras finished, sir. The limited counteroffensives would simply be a method of execution."

Hershel lips twitched upward slightly. "Fair point. Though..."

He paused briefly. "Did you really thing this plan would actually... work?"

I looked back at the strategic plot. So much red. Yet, so many places the invading horde had failed to reach at their appointed hour.

"It has exceeded my expectations, sir."

[x]

Karen looked at the American Engineering Chief. She felt like she wanted to hate the woman, but for some reason felt fairly sure that do so would be letting her win.

"So, I've got some decent anti-destroyer 105mm airburst shells worked out. Command wants to test them with the M24 Squad Support Gun."

"And why is this of concern to me?" Karen asked.

"Order came down; they want you to run the field test." Sasaki shrugged. "Apparently you're the best we have at using this thing in direct combat. I'd suggest you get re-fitted with something like the Rush Guard loadout."

"What?"

"That's what happens when you use weapons that fell of the back of a ship." Sasaki muttered.

"No, you said _Rush Guard_. I'm a _Storm Vanguard_." Karen said. "That's completely different."

"I meant what I said. You've been reassigned." Sasaki turned and began to walk away, looking back at her clipboard. "Fucking hereditary aristocracy."

Almost growling as she turned away, Karen caught sight of a transport crate of 105mm rounds. With the propellant cylinder attached, they really did look like rifle rounds nearly a meter long. Even though the SSG rounds had nearly the same caliber as an Assault Cannon's 120mm cannon shells, each of the drum mags held _far_ more of them. The 105mm shells seemed much slimmer than the 120s, so maybe-

Karen clenched her hands into fists. That was _not_ an appropriate line of thought for a warrior and noble. Her mother would be... Displeased.

After all the work it had taken, the endless live and simulated training with knives and swords to qualify for Storm Vanguard, and it was gone.

If she'd died on the field near the end of the first day of the invasion, at least it would have been clean and neat. And she wouldn't have been stuck alone in the bizarre half-light of uncertainty. Alone.

Just like Ichiro.

[x]

I flared my Jump Units, firing my hip thrusters as I let the main engines die to push myself back. A short burst of railgun fire obliterated the jumping Tank and finished off the rest of his brood. Assault cannons reloaded, just in time for the Grapplers to clear the ruined buildings and give me a clear line of fire. They were gone two hundred chaingun rounds later. As the last Grappler-class dropped, I reactivated my engines and started moving again. That was key.

The Avenger had a lot of thrust, but a poor thrust-to-weight ratio. Therefore, it could get up to a very solid peak speed, but it took it time to build up that velocity. That was another factor that made piloting an Attacker far more of an intellectual challenge than piloting a Surface Fighter.

I didn't have the maneuverability to slip out of tight situations, so I had to read the field, and avoid or annihilate the trouble before I got stuck in it. I didn't have to simply put my shells in the right place, which wasn't all that difficult with the Avenger's automatic stabilization and ballistic aim assistance; I had to find the _right_ place to put each round, which was considerably harder.

A line of Destroyer-class appear in my sights. Facing eighty degrees, range two point seven kilometers.

That I could do.

Planting my feet, I readied my quenchguns as the Destroyers closed, thirty percent faster than usual.

Rapid fire, six volleys in quick succession. Shells burst into flowers of flame and smoke above the Destroyer line. Specks of dark blood filled the air as they faded, dozens of tungsten carbide balls tearing into each of the aliens along the center of the line like a swarm of icepicks.

I strafed to the right, gaining an angle on the nearest Destroyer on the surviving left flank. I killed that one, then began firing airburst rounds at the right flank as I gunned down its replacements in sequence.

Certainly, I felt like I was getting... better might not be the best word for it. More coordinated, like I was getting better at applying the skills I inexplicably had, or maybe I was just getting more familiar with the battlefield.

Also, it was entirely possible that this level of firepower had some form of _mind-altering_ effects. I was currently discharging fourteen different weapons at once, feeling the recoil through the enhanced feedback array and watching the Destroyer wave fall apart. It was _amazing_.

The simulated combat continued like that for some time. Now that Sasaki had managed to get a decent quenchgun shell worked out, I felt much more comfortable making somewhat more liberal use of my shoulder cannons, and it showed. The four 120mm quenchguns were capable of laying waste to a broad swathe of aliens in short order if kept fed and used properly.

On the other hand, I hadn't found as much use for my back rails in the simulation, beyond throwing virtual recon shells. It seemed like they were the sort of weapon that were only really useful in a real fight.

I was glad I had the chance to get some more practice it. I wasn't scheduled for another planned sortie until the afternoon. That would give the team assigned to making the airburst shells time to run off a decent stockpile, and also keep me, the Blizzard Wyrms, and the rest of the units that had made up Seraph Battalion in reserve against the still-rising concentration of BETA.

The fact that the numbers of the enemy were still rising towards their initial levels despite the ongoing combat was almost amazing. The Asiatic Hordes, swarms drawn from the inner Asian Hives, were in full motion, and the numbers involved were astounding.

Terrifying, of course, but it was still impressive that they pull it off. We'd need to work out a decent counter for that at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Eventually, it was those numbers that go me. The Avenger was durable enough that it took some work for the Grappler-class to beat me to death, and the feedback array made dying in the simulation... unpleasant.

On one hand, it was probably helpful in making sure simulator-death was not cheap. On the other hand, it sucked. There was probably a balance to be found, but that would take time I didn't really have.

I shut down the simulation system and began the disembarkation system. With three simulations complete, it was probably a good time to check with the engineering and command staff for situation updates. And probably get some fresh air. I might have also wanted to get something to eat, but the synthetic gruel was impressively effective at suppressing appetite.

The light of the hanger filled my cockpit and I rose out of the armored bathtub. The hanger was exactly as busy as I'd have expected it to be. I exited my cockpit and made my way to the ground. Things seemed to be going well; the pace of work in the hanger seemed to be hectic, but not frantic.

As I made my way forward toward the maintenance hub at the end of this particular hanger section, I caught sight of something; my least favorite pugnacious purple princess to be specific. Karen seemed to be glaring at an ammunition crate.

I stopped for a moment, considering if it would be worth checking with Command first, or finding another route to Engineering. It would be more pleasant, but it would also take time; the hangar spaces were not small.

"No rest for the wicked." I muttered, stepping forward.

[x]

Alisa Schwarzschild looked up at the massive matte-black travel crate as it was moved off the C-5M Ultragalaxy superheavy transport aircraft. She frowned; Jet lag had never really bothered her before, but crossing the pacific at speed involved a double-digit time change.

She was wearing a jacket over her fortified suit; the battalion commander had ordered the pilots to don combat gear as soon as they landed on account of the fluid nature of the situation. Her suit was somewhat bulkier than most with a membrane that was more translucent than it was transparent. It had to be at least adequately able to pull double duty as an anti-g suit, so some differences were to be expected. The dark grey of the suit served to highlight her deep-red shoulder-length hair, creating a rather odd contrast.

The silvery lettering on the side of the crate flashed in the sun as it was moved into the hanger. The writing was currently eligible, but she knew the label by heart.

Engineering Manufacturing Development II Unit 64B - Frame/Drive Test Type.

The incredibly loud sound of another of the C-5M transports coming in for a landing washed over the airfield. The aircraft flew in absurdly hot just above the waves, then reduced airspeed to practically _drop_ onto the not-quite makeshift airfield just outside the city of Kochi. The probability of encountering an actual heavy laser threat was minimal, but considering the value of the cargo, caution was warranted.

Alisa looked back at the western sky. It was really happening.

For one reason or another, the United States of America had decided to make a stand here. She'd heard that the docks at Pearl were empty. If that was true, it meant the full Fifth Fleet had set sail, and there was only one place that the central pacific fleet might be headed that made sense.

And of course, her unit was here too.

Alisa frowned. She wasn't at all sure about that decision. Historically, throwing new weapons into battle before they were fully ready was a recipe for disaster; the Germans had done it at least twice with their advanced heavy tanks, and it had ended poorly both times.

That said, a battalion wasn't a small formation for TSFs, and when the situation was bad enough, sometimes you had to choose between the least bad from a menu of terrible options.

Live-fire drills, flight stress-testing, endless simulations and AR maneuvers; she'd done everything possible to prepare to fight the BETA short of shooting actual aliens with live ammunition. She was ready. She would not allow herself to consider any other possibility.

[x]

Major Alfred Walken shook his head as he inspected the Niihama coastal defenses. It wouldn't have been so bad if he was looking at fortifications rather than a fairly nice beach.

The 66th Tactical Armor Battalion was normally based in Guam, serving as Quick Response Force on the East and South Asian Defense Lines. His unit had fought in Vietnam and Laos, and had gone through the crucible that was Thailand, the campaign that had halted the BETA advance north of Singapore. They were, unlike too many other American units, hardened veterans.

He had loaded the battalion and support units onto their transports almost before battle had been joined. They'd then sailed to the edge of their default patrol zone, and area three hundred and fifty miles around Guam probably drawn with occasional aerial patrols in mind, and kept station while waiting for the order to engage.

In all honesty, the battle really was that important; anyone with a map could say as much. If the Japanese folded, then the BETA could skip across the Kuril Islands and roll up the flank of the Soviet Kamchatka defense line. That would cause the final collapse of the Soviet Union, and then it would be a roll of the dice as to whether or not the Bering Strait would hold.

And if Alaska itself turned into a battlefield, the massive drain on American resources it would create could ensure that even a victory there meant the end of the human race.

Of course, first he needed to find a way to stop a quarter of a million angry BETA from storming this beach. The one thing Walken knew he _did_ have in his favor was that, unless the undersea topography report he'd received was grossly incorrectly, this was one of the few places where the sub-surface slopes were right for the BETA to make a combat landing. Most places beyond this stretch would hamstring the ability of the Destroyers to climb ashore.

At least he had some decent ridgelines to work with.

"Sir." One of the battalion staff aides stepped forward, offering a pair of field glasses. "We have incoming contacts."

Walken nodded, taking the binoculars and raising them to his eye. He was used to TSF digital optics; it took him a few seconds to focus clearly on the specks on the horizon.

Type-94 Shiranuis, coming in fast right on the deck. They weren't conducting evasive maneuvers that might indicate the presence of a laser threat, but they were burning fuel like it was going out of style.

As he adjusted his focus and looked more closely, Major Walken frowned slightly. Each of the Type-94s was marred by considerable battle damage; at least two appeared to be missing arms.

[x]

"Hello Karen." I said.

"What are you doing here?" She muttered, turning away from her box of shells to glare at me.

"I was going to check with Sasaki about ongoing engineering efforts." I said, working to keep my voice level. "Railgun rounds and the like."

"So this is _your_ doing?" Karen seemed to dart forward as she spoke, almost hissing.

"Wait, what?"

"I should have seen it." Karen's eyes narrowed. She stepped back and leveled a finger at me. "I demand satisfaction."

I will not claim to have perfect judgment, but I will offer in my defense that my present extended situation was _somewhat_ stressful. I could claim to have had some elaborate plan about removing Karen as a potential obstacle, but I won't. I'm not entirely certain what I was thinking; I suspect my frustration with Miss Nishimura had simply reached a limit.

"So Miss Royal Guard wants to take me on?" I said, tone abruptly shifting as the maintenance and engineering staff turned. "Fine. Come at me."

[x]

"You know," Ingrid said, leaning against the hanger wall as I secured myself in the control block of my Avenger, "You should really learn to watch what you say."

I looked across the hanger to where the better part of an Imperial Guard squadron was in the process of boarding their Multicolored TSFs and sighed.

"You're probably right." I said, securing the main anchor bolts.

"To be fair, the A-12 is _way_ better than the Type-82 is just about every respect. Except acceleration, of course, and their top speed is going to be a bit higher than yours." Ingrid rested a finger on her chin. "I'd say they could take you down reliably with three-to-one odds, safely with four-to-one. Of course, most of them are probably better pilots than you, so..."

"Beginning asymmetric aerial combat exercise." I said loudly, tapping the command to lower my control block.

First things first; what was I up against?

Karen, with her yellow Type-82F, and another of the same variant painted red, plus five of the white Type-82A frames, which would have somewhat less performance. Lastly, there were three of the black Type-82C units.

The C-series would have to be my priority targets. Even through their TSFs would have the lowest performance of the lot, their pilots would be those inducted into the Guard on account of meritorious service. They got in by skill rather than birth, so they had a level of assured quality the other Guardsmen wouldn't.

Standard Fortified Suit connection established - Nominal

Secondary Array Mind Impulse Unit connection established - Nominal

System ver 1.03 - A-12 Avenger

I checked my readouts, ammunition and mechanical status. Everything was at 100%; the exercise simulation had even given me a fresh set of atomic fuel elements. I also had a full load of factory-grade EM ammo; APFSRADS rounds for my shoulder quenchguns in the place of anti-BETA airburst and ballistic-capped armor-piercing HE shells. Lots of recon shells for my back rails, along with some other goodies.

My kit had a few other variations for anti-TSF warfare. Extra shrouding on some of the sensor antennae, strike plates on important components and armor extensions over joints, and a few blocks of Explosive Reactive Armor on my ordinance pods. I carried a pair of assault cannons with API chaingun rounds and extra sabot magazines.

"Now beginning Tactical Armor asymmetric combat exercise." The cool synthetic voice of the simulator said, just as my retinal projection system came online. "Subalpine urban outskirts environment. Good hunting."

And then I was standing in a peaceful meadow ringed by hills. It was about what I would have expected visually; the quality of the virtual image was impressive, though everything still carried echoes of that CG 'not-quite-right' look.

The hills were tall enough to impede vision, and while my lower-frequency radar probably wouldn't be bothered by that, I kept it on standby. If I started broadcasting recklessly, I'd draw down all ten enemy TSFs on me in short order, and my passive IR and sundry systems were good enough that limited visibility probably hurt the Guards more than me.

Karen was angry - that much was clear - so it seemed likely that she would attempt to attack. That was the reasonable choice; with atomic power, I could outlast them if nothing else. Of course, they had 1980 sensor gear and the A-12 incorporated at least some low-observability features and active stealth systems.

Therefore, slightly more than a second after the simulation started, I fired a pair of recon shells and took off, my course at a forty-five degree angle to a line pointing at the enemy start.

Neither shell sent me any data just yet. They would send an encrypted area broadcast after a significant delay so as not to give away my position. I was betting that the Type-82 didn't have artillery spotting radar; they had last-gen sensors overall and weren't built to fight humans.

If I stayed in one spot and hunkered down, I lost. If the Royal Guards surrounded me and stayed outside the range where they could not avoid my weapons, they would win. My armor was solid, but eventually a chaingun round would find a chink, or it would fail under sustained cannon fire. If I tried to run, I wouldn't have the speed to avoid being run down.

So the only option was to attack.

The stream of data from the recon shells began to arrive, and I grinned. Karen had divided her squad into two flights of five and split up to conduct a search. Both groups were emitting electromagnetic radiation wholesale.

This could work.

I raised by body almost parallel to the ground as I gained altitude. I dialed my engines units to maximum sustainable power as I fired my hip thrusters downward, using them to provide extra lift and allowing me to direct more of the power from my main drives to propulsion. The acceleration force was noticeable, but not particularly severe after the first few seconds of my charge.

The Type-82 was fast and agile. The only way I was going to be able to ever control the terms of an engagement was if I had momentum on my side, if I attacked at a high enough relative starting velocity that they couldn't jump me immediately. That might be as much as half of what I needed to win.

 _I can do this_ , I thought, trying to convince myself, _Float like a boulder, sting like an atom bomb. I'm a damn_ space battleship _.  
_  
My speed ticked over four hundred miles per hour as I began my final approach to the first group of enemies, led by the red Type-82F, presumably, rather than Karen herself. I had plotted my approach to keep a large hill between myself and the foe. For this attack, I might have at least a moment of surprise. Lowering my Jump Units, I began to climb.

And then I crested the hill, rising into view in an instant flank by the thin clouds of plasma cast behind me to either side by the flares of my braking burn.

Even before I arrested my upward motion, I attacked, railguns blazing as I charged at a speed most race cars would envy.

It took slightly less than a second for the first high-velocity rounds to arrive. I was firing all eight guns fairly close to their redline rate, spending ammo like water.

The enemy began evasive maneuvers almost immediately after those first rounds arrived. They were moving erratically; I couldn't tell if the Guardsmen were actually trying to avoid the fire or simply reduce the rate at which they were struck. Either way, it had at least some effect.

None avoiding being hit, though. The railgun shells threw up a dazzling fountain of sparks whenever they struck supercarbon armor, and all five enemies lit up like burning Christmas trees.

I shifted position slightly, firing canister shot from my Assault Cannons as I drew closer. I didn't seriously expect it to pose a serious threat to the Japanese TSFs, but if it tore off a sensor mast or deformed a control surface, I was in no position to decline anything that might make my life easier.

Plus, supercarbon was less ductile than metallic armor, and therefore more likely to suffer chipping or cracking from an impact insufficient for penetration. That could come in handy later.

The distance closed at an insane speed; my velocity, added to that of the enemy in nearly the exact opposite direction.

The enemy turned engaged. One of the black Type-82C units managed to get a cannon shot off along with a burst of chaingun fire. My speed amplified the effect of my evasive maneuvering; the cannon shell never came close, and the chaingun rounds that hit glanced off my armor. The armoring scheme of the Avenger included a number of angles intended to help cut down its radar cross section, which provided the rather nice side benefit of making it surprisingly difficult to land a square hit on the Attacker.

I was coming to understand that the whole A-12 was like that. The design requirements and specifications for the machine had been hefty enough to be worth binding in multiple volumes. To create a final product that met specifications while remaining anything like practical, myriad systems and components of the Avenger were built to provide one or more other systemic benefits without compromising their function. The high-density core frame provided a considerable amount of auxiliary radiation shielding for the nuclear reactor. The heat management systems for the reactor had been slightly expanded to provide an impressive ability to control IR emissions.

The group of Type-82s had scattered somewhat in the seconds it took me to close. Still moving at slow-jetliner speed, I passed through the center of the formation and executed a skew turn.

Even vaguely simulated by my neural array, the sudden rush of twisting g-force and the jolting as my aerodynamic profile changed was one of the less pleasant things I'd ever experienced.

I rose to a standing position, still flying several meters above the ground, bringing my quenchguns to bear on the enemy.

As my hip thrusters reactivated, I aimed all four shoulder cannons at one of the Type-82C units and fired. At this range, just under a hundred meters, that did not constitute an attack. It was an execution.

The rocket motors buried in the tungsten carbide darts just barely had time to ignite, though they hardly burned long enough to have any meaningful effect.

It didn't really matter. The Guardsman's fuel cells ignited as they were torn apart by shearing force and he vanished into a cloud of shrapnel and flame.

I began to trade fire with the surviving Imperial Guards as I withdrew, taking multiple chaingun hits as the range opened. I lost a radar array and an auxiliary plate in the exchange; when I was getting hit with enough of the chaingun rounds at once, the feedback started to _sting_.

Still, I landed at least a few railgun hits of my own, and discouraged at least an immediate vector reversal by the enemy. That said, they still had far more than enough throw weight to take me down, and the feed from the recon shell I launched only confirmed what I was already almost certain of.

The enemy was converging on my position. Nine Zuikakus.

I looked back at my tactical plot. I had at least one trick left.

[x]

Ingrid watched one of the green dots on the large screen vanish, leaving four dots in close proximity to the rapidly receding point of red light.

"Nishimura 9, killed in action." The cold, faintly feminine voice of the simulation computer said, incapable of caring about the events it oversaw. "Nishimura 2, minor damage. Nishimura 5, light damage. Nishimura 6, moderate damage. Nishimura 9, light damage."

The computer paused for a moment as it finished its damage evaluations.

"Seraph 1, minor damage."

And _that_ was why you armored up.

Nearby, the girls of Swordwind Squadron whispered excitedly, though Ingrid wasn't entirely sure what they were discussing. They'd completed another mission earlier in the morning, this time providing melee screening and fire support for Revenant Squadron. They were almost starting to become real soldiers.

Ingrid looked back at the map. Michael had gained a fair amount of breathing room, maintaining speed with a few course changes out of the first clash. Now, however, he was cutting speed aggressively.

The red dot came to a full stop. And sat there. Ingrid frowned, trying to figure out what Michael was doing. If he was trying to win by operational endurance, then it would have made for sense to try and drive up the distance as much as possible. And it had seemed like he'd come to the same conclusion on castling as she had.

After slightly more than two minutes, Seraph 1 rocketed back into motion, gaining speed quickly. Far too quickly for a surface glide or low-NOE flight. It was almost as if...

Ingrid almost doubled over laughing as she connected the dots. It was a stupid strategy, but that didn't really changed the fact that there was actually a decent chance it might work here.

[x]

"Flight two, go high." Karen ordered. "Split into elements and attack from the sides. Flight one, from up on me."

She glared at the American Tactical Surface Attacker on her display. It had alighted on the top of a heavy-built building near the center of the virtual town. It was facing her squadron, though the railguns on its arms were still quiet.

Karen's eyes narrowed as she pushed her engines to maximum power. She would _not_ allow that man to ruin everything. She would humiliate him, and then they could fight the BETA properly, and everything would be fine again.

As she pulled ahead of the rest of the squadron, a warning tone filled her cockpit.

 _A laser alert?_ Karen thought, frantically looking over her secondary displays, _how is that possible_?

Then she saw the IR scanner. Multiple thermal signatures. Overhead.

[x]

I let out a slight sigh of relief as the world turned to fire. I hadn't been at all sure it was going to work, but the sight of seventy-two rocket-assisted ATICM rounds raining down hellfire on my enemies made it completely worthwhile.

Plus, now I might even have a shot at winning.

The plan had been fairly straightforward; basically a time-on-target barrage, but with a much longer time than usual between firing and impact by virtue of the high muzzle velocity of by back rails. With the precisely variable launch power and high rate of fire of the railguns, I was able to get a _lot_ of metal in the air at the same time. Even if it might have more or less burned out the guns outside of a simulation.

That would have been mostly useless, though. Even with the smart shells I was using, the enemy was moving around too much for long-range shots to be easily viable. I had to make sure I had them in the right spot, on schedule.

I had some leeway, though. Fortunately, whoever had designed my Avenger's artillery system was the sort of obsessive-compulsive bastard who would include secondary provisions for a number of trajectory-shaping options with smart shells. Presumably, that was as a counter to possible long-range laser interception. I could think of a number of situations were that would be useful, actually.

The advanced guidance gave me a spatial margin of error for where the enemy had to be; the shells had a remarkably ability to conduct course corrections on the way down, especially when I was providing targeting assistance. That had required some concentration, but staying stationary was already part of the plan.

Then, the rocket assist motors on the shells gave me temporal leeway. I'd cold-launched the shells, and ignited the rocket motors as the enemy approached my killzone, accelerating their descent and easing terminal corrections.

I charged as the sound of a thousand insane firecrackers from hell washed over me, the simulation confirming the elimination of two more enemies.

The first target I reached was the red Type-82F. It appeared to have completely lost a jump unit to the rain of shells, and both of its shoulder blocks had been savaged by burning steel. Two Assault Cannon shells sent it to the ground.

What followed was neither clever nor elegant. I had no grand strategy; the city forced the Japanese pilots into a mire of a slugfest where my armor trumped their maneuverability. They had numbers, but the sudden ferocity of my iron rain had broken their attack pattern and left them scattered. Not one unit left on the field was undamaged, but like the battleships of yesteryear, the Avenger was built to take hits and keep fighting.

What must have been only a few minutes later, I stood in clearing on the outskirts of the virtual city, gunsmoke curling from both barrels of my remaining Assault Cannon as a black Zuikaku collapsed. Nine units eliminated, leaving only-

Abruptly, the air seemed to go dark, clouded by smoke. My now-active radar began to fuzz, and IR feed quality began to degrade.

 _Anti-Laser Smoke_ , I thought, _which means-_

I surged by Jump Units and leapt forward, turning around just as a yellow TSF shot out of the dense bank of smoke behind me, sword sweeping forward in a brutal overhead slash as I tried to evade.

And did not quite make it.

A surge of feedback ran through my left shoulder as the blade stuck, the impact reducing my quenchgun pod to a shattered ruin.

Karen's TSF continued past me, blade tearing free as I shifted to the side and turned to face her.

The Type-82 was in surprisingly good shape. Her shield and assault cannon were both gone, but she appeared to have taken remarkably little damage. Maybe she'd found overhead cover and sacrificed the shield to weather my shells, but that was unimportant now. What mattered was the fact that she still had one perfectly good sword.

In that moment, I reached a decision. Perhaps this fight could accomplish something worthwhile after all.

As Karen came around to face me, I pointed my forearm railguns upward and ejected their magazines. Four blocky rectangular boxes fell out of each ordnance pod as the sole mount pylon on my back elevated to horizontal position. I tossed by Assault Cannon aside as the magazines struck the ground, and I reached up, my right hand closing on the handle that unfolded over my shoulder.

I raised the weapon from its mount, my glaive unfolding and locking completely as I planted the counterweight on the ground.

Karen's machine nodded slightly, then leveled its blade and took off towards me, Jump Units flaring.

I swept her blade away as I sidestepped, then countered. She recovered and parried, then launched a quick jab that glanced off my torso armor. I had to abort my counter as she followed through into a sweep, catching the attack on the shaft of my glaive. I swung forward and Karen slid back out of range, raising her weapon to an aggressive guard position.

She attacked again, and I defended. Beating back a flurry of attacks, I took off, boost jumping across a collapsed building.

Karen took off after me. Blade clashed twice in midair, then I pushed myself back with my hip thrusters, opening the range for a strong jab. Karen cut thrust and dropped away slightly, giving her time to parry but letting me get my footing fist.

I pressed the attack, accomplishing nothing and taking another ineffective blow for my trouble. That was problematic. The PB-blade was stressing my armor like crazy, and I couldn't keep taking hits like that.

Increasing power to my Jump Units, I transitioned halfway to a surface glide, and as the next clash began, used by hip thrusters to roll with Karen's attacks, giving me a little extra time to dodge and reducing the severity of her impacts.

But that was only a delaying measure. As our flight crashed through a line of virtual houses, I became increasingly sure I was going to lose. Karen's fuel might run out before she killed me, but I doubted that. She actually knew what she was doing in this kind of fight, and her maneuverability advantage was giving her too many options for attack and defense.

 _Need to get an edge_ , I thought, launching a series of warding attacks of my own as Karen circled around me. _I need to change the rules_.

That was obvious. Billion-dollar question was _how_.

I stepped on a parked car, almost costing me my footing as Karen renewed her offensive. I held her at bay for a moment.

She landed a hit and I slid back, just to get hit by her follow-up. I lost my balance, arms, legs, and Jump Units struggling to regain stability as Karen began a brutal finishing blow.

My Jump Units reached horizontal position as I overcorrected forward and flared my engines to emergency power, launching me forward as I swung my glaive in a broad, sweeping attack.

Karen blocked it easily.

And left herself wide open to my left cross.

[x]

Karen felt a tingle of feedback in her chest as the Attacker's gauntlet smashed into the upper body section of her TSF, crumpling metal and shattering supercarbon, stopping just short of the final cockpit bulkhead. A moment later, a second splash of red accompanied appeared on her monitor as the tip of his glaive struck her jump unit in a sharp blow that shattered a portion of the engine housing.

She barely noticed the tingle of feedback that swept through her sternum as her simulated TSF was destroyed and her cockpit went dark. She could have disembarked, but what would have been the point? It was all... too much.

So Karen Nishimura, third child and heir apparent of the _fudai_ house Nishimura and Toha Heavy Industries, remained in the dark as she sank into memories.

" _The United Nations third Orbital Diver Division, supported by the UN Sixth Fleet and USSC Task Force Halcyon, conducted a Hive Infiltration operation against Objective 20 earlier this morning. Information is limited at this time, it is know that the attack has failed, and..."_

 _The United Nations Aerospace force regrets to inform you that Lieutenant Ichiro Nishimura was killed in action on February 22, 1997. He served with distinction during the retreat from the Cheorwon landing zone after..._

" _I have to go, sis. Remember, you're the eldest until I get back, so stay strong."_

 _"Karen, you might inherit someday, but even if you don't, you will become involved in politics, and as your mother I will not allow anyone to have grounds to justly criticize you. There will be more than enough of that on account of your gender, whatever positions you chose to support. So, you must be perfect, utterly beyond reproach."_

" _You really shouldn't be spending so much time with me, Karen. We have the same name, but my family is just a cadet branch. You're getting old enough that it isn't really appropriate for you to be close to someone so below your station. I'm looking at studying overseas, in England or the U.S., maybe, but either way..."_

[x]

"So," Major Alfred Walken said, nodding to the Imperial Army unit leader as he disembarked from his Type-94, "What's your status?"

"Not the best." The man, Captain Koichiro Marito according to his suit tags, shook his head. "Battalion got cut off somewhere west of Hiroshima, and the Major wasn't too keen on the idea of withdrawing, even if we were damn near out of ammo. But he died when we started to get overrun, and I took command and gave the order to fall back. If the laser coverage had been a few degrees tighter..."

"But you lived to fight another day." Walken said, glancing at the obvious bite marks covering one of the kneeling Type-94s.

"Not sure how long that's going to last, though." Marito smiled mirthlessly. "It looked a lot like the bugs are massing to cross the channel."

Walken glanced back at the water. It wasn't as if he hadn't expected it. "How bad?"

"Not sure. Six digits, at least." Marito looked inland. "How bad is it?"

"66th Tactical Armored Battalion _Hunter_ is here. The 395th Regiment is in mobile reserve further inland, but they're... well trained, but unblooded. There are a number of your reserve units; they're a mixed bag. We have a few Marine squads spread about along the coast, plus one of their attack squads, and they're all be solid."

"So we hold the beach or five million people die." Marito said.

"And if they take this island, the BETA could cross into Nara and turn the flank on Kyoto." Walken said. "That seems likely to end poorly."

"You mentioned a Marine Attack Squad. Does that mean Intruders?"

Walken nodded.

"So it could be worse." Marito said.

"So we fight on the beaches and the landing grounds." Walken muttered. "...Butt ends of broken beer bottles seem ineffective."

He paused. "Do you know if they have any of the old towed guns stored around here?"

[x]

Karen wasn't sure how long passed before she decided to open her cockpit. The tear tracks down her face had mostly dried, though she felt that she had merely recovered her composure.

The hanger was surprisingly quiet, with a number of the lights turned off. The hulking silvery-grey form of _his_ A-12, almost a shadow in the gloom, still stood in the berth opposite her, but the slots on either side of it were empty. She didn't see anyone, and while it seemed odd that the hanger would be empty-

"Hey."

Her head snapped to face the voice. Fairly tall, dark uniform, black hair and green eyes, and holding what looked like one of the maintenance department's computer slabs. _Him_.

"You're really here to gloat?" Karen muttered, glancing across the hanger at the pristine quenchguns on the shoulder of his Surface Attacker.

"I'm actually trying to be magnanimous, actually." Kranz said, putting down the slap computer on top of one of the engineering consoles. "Not really sure I'm doing a very good job, but..."

"Why?" Karen asked, looking down at the dark command board. "What more do you want?"

"That's actually what I'm trying to figure out." He glanced away. "You clearly don't like me, but what I don't get is _why_. Or at least why me specifically rather than Americans generally."

"You..." Karen shook her head. "You showed up and... Everything..."

She trailed off, unsure.

"Broke?" Kranz offered, eyes flickering toward the computer tablet, or maybe his Avenger.

"Yeah." Karen muttered. It described how she felt perfectly, and yet made it sound so childish. "That."

Kranz took a deep breath, and he seemed to become less certain. His eyes looked almost odd, almost haunted.

"I want you to know that this... is not easy for me, for a number of reasons. We've taken casualties today, yesterday... Men dying to enact a plan I helped create. The waiting is agonizing, and the fighting is terrifying." He shook his head.

"But at the same time, it's significant, meaningful." The corners of his lips twitched upward. "The permanence and the uncertainty is daunting, but it's also heady in a way I never thought anything could be. And... Part of me loves that."

Karen wasn't sure what to say. She felt a flickering of something; kinship, maybe. She felt an odd affinity for the sentiment, certainly.

"But you said I broke everything?" Kranz said, voice gaining strength. "I did, and I cannot apologize for that, because if nothing changes, mankind dies."

He took a step forward. "Far, far more has to break for us to live. Caution can no longer save us. If mankind is to survive, audacity must be our shelter. I have some ideas, but I don't know what I can do alone."

Karen looked up, feeling a strange intensity to his words, and was shocked to see the American pilot standing on the boarding gantry, hand outstretched.

"And if I want to have any chance of making something good out of all of this, I need you, Karen."

Need. It was a word that did strange things to people. A simple word that had driven so many of the great and terrible and wonderful things in the long course of human events.

Karen reached up and took his hand.


End file.
